The product
A real folio, redacted.
Ten sections, one address.
Below is the actual structure of a delivered folio, walked section by section against a real anonymised example — a three-bed leasehold flat in south-east London, asking £1,125,000. Every figure shown is the figure that was delivered — but this is an excerpted walkthrough of each section, not the complete report.
This is an actual delivered folio, redacted wherever it would identify the buyer or the exact address. Everything below is keyed to the postcode sector, which is the geography the folio's own analysis runs on — nothing analytical is lost. Every figure is the figure that was delivered; none of it is illustrative.
- Asking price
- £1,125,000
- Registered anchor (P50)
- £871,234
- Evidence ceiling (P75)
- £1,020,426
- Asking above the evidence
- £253,766
What should I offer, and why that number?
Open at £1,000,017. Aim at £1,020,426. Walk away past £1,020,426.
The folio opens with its conclusion, because a report that buries the number is asking to be skimmed. This one is unusual: the asking sits £253,766 above the registered centre for identical flats, so the aim and the walk-away collapse onto the same figure — the top of what the cohort supports. There is no ground above it to aim at.
- Floor
- £834,035
- cohort P25
- Anchor
- £871,234
- registered centre, P50
- Open
- £1,000,017
- a measured step under the aim
- Aim · walk-away
- £1,020,426
- the cohort ceiling, P75
- Asking
- £1,125,000
- the listing — outside the range
The asking sits £253,766 above the registered centre and £104,574 above the highest figure the cohort supports. That is why the aim and the walk-away are the same number: the bracket is capped at the ceiling, because there is no registered ground above it to aim at.
Dataset intersectionHMLREPCUKHPI
How much room does this listing give me, and what do I actually say?
Leverage: 6.2 of 10 — mildly seller-firm. A soft market, a firm listing, and a cap on every number.
One price signal reads what buyers across this district actually achieve against asking, from 60 completions. Four directional signals then set how far under the aim to open, each shown on its own. Because the asking sits above the evidence, the construction caps the aim at the cohort ceiling rather than applying the achieved-price rate to the listing.
mildly seller-firm
- Market velocity1.0 / 2
Stable
- Price momentum0.0 / 2
Strongly decelerating
- Listing traction2.0 / 2
14 days on market
- Reduction history2.0 / 2
Not yet reduced
The price signal is separate from all four: registered completions across this district settle at roughly the final asking, from 60 recent cases. Applied to a listing priced above its own evidence, that rate would simply hand back the asking — so the construction caps the Aim at the cohort ceiling, £1,020,426, instead. The four signals above only govern how far under that cap the opening sits: £20,409 here.
Subject: Offer — [address withheld], SE5 8 — [Your name], chain-free
“Dear [Agent's name], thank you for showing me around the flat. I'd like to put forward a formal offer of £1,000,017. I'm chain-free with a mortgage agreed in principle, and I can work to the seller's preferred timescale. The figure is built from the registered record rather than picked against the asking price: ten identical flats in this postcode sector place the evidence centre at £871,234, and the upper quartile of that same cohort — £1,020,426 — is the highest figure the record supports. Registered flat volume across the borough is down 41% from its 2017 peak, and 2025 was the thinnest full year in a decade. The lease term, ground rent and service charge are not yet confirmed on the public record, so the offer holds a margin for what the management pack may show.”
The letter cites the anchor directly, which inverts the usual advice. Where an asking price sits below the registered centre, naming the anchor argues the seller's side — it tells them their price is already generous. Here the asking sits £253,766 above it, so the anchor is the argument rather than a card to hold back. The letter still leaves the sector's headline price fall out, because that figure rests on a four-sale quarter the folio itself marks as directional rather than confirmed: an argument the agent can knock down weakens the ones they cannot.
Dataset intersectionHMLRUKHPI
Which sales were allowed to count?
3,825 flats in the sector become the 12 sales that anchor the recommendation.
The agent selects which comparables to cite. The identity lock does the opposite — it accepts every qualifying transaction and omits none. The funnel below is the actual cascade for this address, and it halted at Stage 1: the sector itself already held enough evidence, so the search never widened to the district and never relaxed the pre-1900 era band.
Roughly 0.3% of the sector's 3-bed flats anchor the recommendation. Stage 1 requires ten transactions at the tightest geography; this cohort had twelve, so the search never widened and never relaxed the era band. Bars are drawn on a square-root scale so the smallest is still legible — the counts beside them are the real figures.
Dataset intersectionHMLREPCVOANSPL
What have identical flats actually sold for?
All twelve — named, dated and priced, including the two trimmed from the anchor.
The cohort median of £750.87/sq ft, applied to this flat’s cross-checked floor area, produces the £871,234 anchor — £253,766 below the £1,125,000 asking. Every transaction behind that median is listed below, including the two outliers removed before the median was taken, so the number can be checked rather than taken on trust.
| Comparable | Sold | Sale price | May 2026 £ | Floor area | £/sq ft | EPC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE5 8LY | Mar 2025 | £555,000 | £533,000 | 850 sq ft | £626 | C |
| SE5 8BX | Dec 2024 | £840,000 | £811,000 | 1,163 sq ft | £698 | D |
| SE5 8NN | Mar 2025 | £750,000 | £720,000 | 1,012 sq ft | £711 | D |
| SE5 8DG | Jan 2026 | £670,000 | £654,000 | 883 sq ft | £741 | C |
| SE5 8QJ | Mar 2025 | £642,000 | £616,000 | 829 sq ft | £743 | C |
| SE5 8NE | Mar 2025 | £625,000 | £600,000 | 791 sq ft | £758 | C |
| SE5 8JA | Oct 2024 | £697,500 | £669,000 | 786 sq ft | £851 | C |
| SE5 8JU | Mar 2025 | £787,500 | £756,000 | 850 sq ft | £889 | D |
| SE5 8JU | Jun 2025 | £878,000 | £858,000 | 936 sq ft | £916 | C |
| SE5 8JU | Jan 2026 | £810,000 | £790,000 | 786 sq ft | £1,006 | D |
| SE5 8JUTrimmed · lowest £/sq ft in cohort | Nov 2024 | £515,000 | £495,000 | — | £621 | C |
| SE5 8JETrimmed · highest £/sq ft in cohort | Sep 2025 | £989,000 | £938,000 | — | £1,013 | D |
| This flat | Asking | £1,125,000 | — | 1,160 sq ft | £970 | C |
All twelve qualifying transactions, named by postcode rather than address — client addresses are never disclosed, even in an anonymised sample. The highest and lowest £/sq ft were trimmed before the median was taken and are shown anyway, with the reason given: none selected, none omitted. £/sq ft is computed from the UKHPI-adjusted price rather than the registered sale price, which is why sale price ÷ floor area does not reproduce the last column.
Dataset intersectionHMLREPCUKHPI
Is this a fast market or a slow one?
Sector £/sq ft is down 11.5% from its Q3 2025 peak, on borough transaction volume down 41% since 2017.
A single "the market" number hides real divergence — but here the divergence does not rescue the asking. The sector traded at £764/sq ft in Q3 2025 on 7 sales and £676/sq ft by Q1 2026 on 4. Zoom out and every geography is down, the borough included, so there is no stronger local headline to borrow confidence from.
Median £/sq ft by quarter · sector vs district · dot size ∝ sale count
The peak
£764/sf
Q3'25, on 7 registered sales — the strongest quarter in this window.
Since the peak
-11.5%
Sector £/sf has fallen from £764 to £676. The final quarter carries only 4 sales — read as directional, not a confirmed floor.
Transaction volume
−41%
Borough flat sales have fallen from 3,574 in 2017 to 2,100 in 2025 — a decade-long drift, read on completed years only.
Zoom out and there is nothing to borrow UKHPI, 8-quarter change
- England-0.4%
- Southwark (borough)-2.4%
- London (region)-4.5%
- SE5 8 (sector)-6.9%
- SE5 (district)-8.4%
England is roughly flat over the same 8 quarters, and every geography below it is down — London the region, the borough, the district and the sector alike. This sector is not even the weakest of the five; its own district is. That changes how the local softness reads: it is not a pocket anomaly that a strong borough will pull against, because the borough is trailing the country too. Read it as one layer of a wider softening rather than an outlier inside a healthy market.
Dataset intersectionHMLRUKHPI
Why is the seller actually selling?
The register does speak here — and the classification it supports still moves the opening by exactly £0.
The methodology scores seven possible seller situations — forced sale, motivated, rapid resale, life event and others — each against what the register would need to show and what it would move the opening by. This seller has a registered prior purchase, which resolves the classification to a life-event pattern. That pattern carries a £0 shift by design, so the leverage case rests on the market evidence either way.
- Forced salePrior sale required−£27,959
- MotivatedPrior sale required−£18,639
- Rapid resalePrior sale required−£9,320
- DeveloperPrior sale required£0
- PatientPrior sale required+£18,639
- UnknownRegister silent£0
- Life event — this sellerPrior sale required£0
HMLR carries a registered purchase at £1,030,000 in mid-2024 and a hold of 2.2 years since, which the taxonomy reads as a life-event pattern — a holding period consistent with a move rather than a trade. That pattern applies exactly £0 of seller shift. The widest the seller's situation could ever have been worth here is £27,959, the span between the forced-sale and the patient openings — real money, but a fraction of the £186,391 of evidence room the construction already works within. An agent calling any seller "motivated" is offering a tactic; this is what the register actually supports.
Dataset intersectionHMLR
What is actually around this address?
London Victoria in roughly 18 minutes. Full-fibre confirmed at the premises. No computable location premium.
Researched per address rather than pulled from a generic area guide: journey times, school ratings, broadband actually available at the premises, and the full deprivation profile. The section is also candid about its limit — the signals that would price schools, transport and green space in pounds returned no computable value here, and the folio reports that rather than forcing a number.
Getting around
~18 min
The fastest connection in the researched journey set for this address — and the folio says plainly that the location-premium signals returned no computable transport premium here. The connection is real; a registered price premium for it is not.
Schools
5 within 700m
Resolved from GIAS and distance-ranked from the address. Three of the grades are estimates pending a recent formal inspection, which the folio states rather than rounding up to "all Good".
Broadband
1,000 Mbps
Matched to this address via a live Ofcom Coverage API call — 55 addresses checked at this postcode — not a postcode-wide average. Symmetric: 1,000 Mbps up as well as down.
Neighbourhood
Ahead of 48%
The headline hides an eighty-five-point internal spread: schools and skills rank ahead of 95% of England, the living environment ahead of just 10%. The average hides the argument, so the folio draws all seven dimensions.
Researched per address rather than pulled from a generic area guide — and honest about its own limits. The signals that would price schools, transport and green space in pounds returned no computable value for this property, so the folio reports the absence instead of manufacturing a premium. What the register can price is a sector-level gap: comparable flats in this sector trade about £7.80/sq ft (1.4%) under the neighbouring sector across 200 registered transactions — roughly £9,050 at this flat's floor area, and reported undecomposed, because the layer that would attribute it to stock mix or tenure returned empty.
Dataset intersectionNaPTANGIAS/OfstedOfcomIMDOSM
What sits on this address that the listing does not mention?
Insurance-risk severity: 0 of 6 — and two of the five signals could not be assessed at all.
Five independently sourced signals summed on a nine-point scale, plus the planning designations checked separately. Nothing scored — but two signals depend on a construction era this certificate does not record, so they left the scale rather than scoring zero on it. That is an incomplete sheet, not a clean one, and the folio marks the difference.
- 0 of 3
Flood
Zone 1, surface water "very low", nearest mapped water 33m away.
EA flood + surface-water mapping
- 0 of 2
Radon
Class 1 — the lowest banding, not elevated.
National radon mapping
- 0 of 1
Asbestos
The construction era sits outside the window where period materials are a routine consideration.
EPC construction fields
- not assessed
Age
Construction era not recorded on the certificate. This signal left the scale rather than scoring zero on it.
EPC construction fields
- not assessed
Cladding
The same missing field — which is why the total below is out of 6, not 9.
EPC construction fields
Separately, the ten-item property checklist runs alongside this ledger: six checks clear, one flagged — the address sits inside a designated conservation area, so external alterations need consent — and three the public record genuinely does not hold. Listed status returned no address match, which is not the same as confirming the building is unlisted; the seller's onward chain is recorded nowhere public; and the lease term is absent from every register the folio reads. All three are named as gaps rather than assumed away, and the lease term is the one that moves Section 9's cost figures.
Dataset intersectionNaFRABGS/UKHSADefra noisePlanning DataEPC
What does this actually cost, beyond the price?
EPC C at 77 — four points below the B threshold. £372,976 of ownership cost over five years.
The folio does not get to invent evidence when the topic changes: no flat above band C transacted in this cohort, so there is no registered rate against which to price an upgrade — an absence, stated, not a zero measured. What the record does settle is the cash: five years of interest, tax, maintenance and opportunity cost, itemised rather than folded into one round number.
The certificate scores 77 — four points below the B threshold at 81, the smallest re-band distance anywhere on the scale. It is reported as a distance, not a recommendation: no flat above band C transacted in this cohort, so there is no registered rate to price an upgrade against in either direction. An absence, stated, rather than a zero measured.
Five years of ownership, at the Aim price
- Mortgage interest
- £252,555
- Five years on a £918,383 loan at 5.5%, 10% deposit
- Stamp Duty Land Tax
- £45,793
- At the £1,020,426 aim, England standard rates
- Maintenance
- £51,020
- £10,204/yr across the five years
- Insurance
- £1,500
- £300/yr
- Deposit opportunity cost
- £22,108
- What the £102,043 deposit would otherwise have earned
- Total, before the price itself
- £372,976
- Against £167,748 to rent a comparable 3-bed locally over the same five years — a £205,228 gap, before any capital appreciation, which a five-year snapshot cannot responsibly forecast.
Stamp duty across the bracket
- Open · £1,000,017
- £43,752
- Aim · walk-away · £1,020,426
- £45,793
- Asking · £1,125,000
- £56,250
- Difference, aim against asking
- £10,457
- England standard rates, no first-time-buyer relief assumed. The one figure in this section that is exact rather than modelled — and it moves in your favour the lower the agreed price lands.
Ground rent and service charge are absent from the ownership total on purpose. The lease is unconfirmed on every register this folio reads, so both are carried at an explicitly labelled £0 placeholder rather than filled in with a regional average — which makes the total above a floor, not a final figure. Section 8 flags the lease term as the single item that moves every other number here.
Dataset intersectionEPCVOAHMRC SDLTONS PIPR
How exactly was this folio built, and which registers did it use?
Sixteen public registers, in consumption order. Every step named and sourced.
The method behind every section of this folio is documented in full on the SettleIQ methodology page — the Identity Lock, the Glass Box Anchor, the Leverage Matrix, the Risk Register, and the datasets each one draws from. No steps are proprietary; every decision is explained and checkable.
The full methodology — every register named, every transformation documented — is on the SettleIQ methodology page.
Read the full methodology- 01Identity Lock — property type, tenure, age and floor band
- 02Glass Box Anchor — median £/sq ft from the cohort
- 03Leverage Matrix — four directional signals, 0–10 scale
- 04Risk Register — ten property-level checks across five registers
Dataset intersectionHMLREPCONSNaFRABGSVOAPlanning DataOSM
End of excerpts
The delivered folio carries all ten sections in full, with every transaction, source and caveat written out.
Read the whole thing
See the evidence that put an asking price £253,766 above the register.
Enter your email and we'll send you a fully redacted, real-world SettleIQ Folio. See the 14 datasets and the exact tactical bracket we generated.
The complete report
All ten sections, delivered in detail.
- §01 · Recommendation
- Open, aim and walk-away prices, stated on page one.
- §02 · Negotiation intelligence
- Four leverage signals, a live simulator, and a ready-to-send offer email.
- §03 · Evidence
- The identity-lock funnel, from whole sector down to your exact cohort.
- §04 · Comparables
- Every cohort transaction — named, dated, priced and ranked against yours.
- §05 · Market trajectory
- Local liquidity and momentum, and how firmly they let you push.
- §06 · Negotiation environment
- Seller situation, read from the register — never from speculation.
- §07 · Location intelligence
- Schools, transport, real broadband and deprivation — distance-ranked.
- §08 · Risk register
- A nine-point insurance-risk score, every component sourced.
- §09 · Cost & energy
- Council tax, service charge, ground rent, EPC energy cost.
- §10 · Methodology
- How the anchor was calibrated — including where evidence ran thin.
Before you commission
Questions worth asking first.
What is a Buyer Folio?
A Buyer Folio is a commissioned research report on one specific English property, written for the buyer. It runs to ten sections and establishes what identical properties have actually sold for, how much negotiating leverage the listing carries, what liabilities sit on the address in the public record, and a tactical offer bracket — open, aim and walk-away. It costs £480 including VAT and is delivered within two working days of your request being confirmed.
How is this different from a Zoopla or Rightmove estimate?
Portal estimates are automated valuation models. They return a single figure without naming the transactions behind it, without stating the matching rules applied, and without indicating how much evidence sat underneath — you cannot audit one, and you cannot take one into a negotiation. A Buyer Folio names every comparable transaction it used, states the matching rules it applied, and discloses where its evidence was thin. It also refuses to say what a property is worth — it reports only what identical properties have achieved, which is a claim that can be defended in front of an estate agent.
What do I actually receive?
A single self-contained document you can read on a phone, print, or forward to a solicitor or mortgage broker. It includes the Glass Box Anchor, the full named comparables ledger, the Leverage Matrix score, the risk register, the cost-of-ownership picture, the tactical offer bracket, and the email scripts for putting each offer to the selling agent.
What is the Identity Lock?
The Identity Lock is the rule that decides which sales are allowed to inform your number. Properties are matched on type, tenure, new-build status, age band, floor band and — for detached and semi-detached houses — plot size. A two-bed leasehold flat is compared only to other two-bed leasehold flats in the same age and floor band. The lock is what stops a three-bed freehold terrace on the same street from contaminating the evidence.
What is the Glass Box Anchor?
The Glass Box Anchor is the cohort’s median price per square foot applied to your property’s floor area, cross-checked against the EPC register. It is called a Glass Box because the working is shown: the cohort is named, the matching dimensions are stated, the time-adjustment is disclosed, and the trim is declared. It is the baseline the entire offer bracket is built around.
Get the detailed evidence for your target property.
Request your folio