Glossary
The load-bearing terms — the ones where misunderstanding the word means misunderstanding the figure. Every one of them is something the engine actually computes.
Deal analysis
- true discount
- Total money deployed measured against open market value, rather than the headline discount on the purchase price.
- Deal Score
- A 0-100 score computed from nine weighted components, always on profit after tax, never before it.
- capital recycling
- How much of the cash put into a deal comes back out on exit, and how much stays trapped in the property.
- Red Team
- Nine stress scenarios run against every deal, with single-factor losses treated more seriously than compound ones.
- exit matrix
- Every way out of a property costed side by side: sell, refinance and hold, rent, or assign the contract.
- completion probability
- The chance a transaction actually completes, derived from the chain, the tenure, the finance and what the seller needs.
Selling a property
- assisted sale
- The seller keeps ownership while a partner funds and manages the works, then the property is sold and the seller takes an agreed sum.
Finance
- gross development value
- What a property is expected to be worth once the planned works are finished.
- bridging finance
- Short-term secured lending used to buy and refurbish property that a mortgage will not lend against.
- capital stack
- Every source of money in a purchase, ordered by who is repaid first and what each layer costs.
- net advance
- The cash a lender actually releases at drawdown, after arrangement fees and any interest retained up front.
- retained interest
- Interest deducted at drawdown for the whole term rather than paid monthly, which reduces the cash released.
- loan to GDV
- Total debt measured against the finished value rather than the purchase price, which is how a development lender sizes risk.
- refinance window
- The period in which a short-term facility must be refinanced or repaid, computed from completion and the facility term.
Tax
- additional dwelling surcharge
- Extra transfer tax charged when the buyer already owns another property, or is buying through a company.
Regulation
- seller protection
- Checks that can stop a transaction outright where a seller may not be able to give free and informed consent.
- MEES
- The rule making it unlawful to continue letting a domestic property in England and Wales rated F or G.
- Buyer Readiness Passport
- A buyer's identity and funding evidence, graded A to D, deciding whether they may be put in front of a seller at all.
- material information
- The facts that must be published about a property before it is marketed, in three parts, with unanswered treated as an answer.
- customer due diligence
- Identifying and verifying who you are transacting with, and who is behind them, before the transaction proceeds.
- financial promotion
- An invitation or inducement to engage in investment activity, which only an authorised person may communicate or approve.
- beneficial owner
- Whoever ultimately owns or controls an entity, identified from 25% ownership or voting rights upward.
Property data
- Price Paid Data
- Every registered property sale in England and Wales since 1995, published free under the Open Government Licence.
- EPC register
- The public register of energy performance certificates, which also publishes floor area and lodgement dates.