What we need from you to underwrite a deal, and what we fetch ourselves

An address is enough to start. From it we read public records and comparable sales ourselves, and we come back with a written answer that shows which figures came from records and which were assumed. Everything below is about making that answer sharper, not about making it possible. We hold no appraisal licence and we do not call our output a valuation or an appraisal. Where our records stop, we say so on the page rather than filling the gap with a confident sentence. ## What we fetch ourselves, without asking you Parcel geometry and identifiers, zoning as recorded, assessor records, recorded deeds and arm's-length sales, and the comparable set we build from them. If the property is in the United States, this is the part you do not have to prepare. ## What only you can give us Four things change an underwrite and cannot be read from records: - the rent roll as it stands today, including vacancies and the dates leases end; - operating statements, or your own figure for what the property actually costs to run; - the price and the terms you are actually looking at, including anything unusual in the contract; - your assumptions, where you already have them: the hurdle, the hold, the exit you have in mind. Send them in whatever form they exist. We read documents as they are and do not ask you to re-type them into a template. ## What you get back A written answer in the room: the read, the comparable set as records, and the figures kept apart from the assumptions. A file comes back sometimes rather than always, and we would rather tell you that here than have you discover it on the first run. ## When you should not send it to us If a lender, a court or a tax authority is the audience for the number, ask that audience what they accept before you commission anything. An underwrite from public records is not an appraisal and does not become one by being careful.