Category guide
Planning and mapping tools vs deal engines
Planning and mapping platforms show you what a site is, what's around it and what you might be allowed to build. A deal engine answers a narrower question: the most you should pay. Here's how the two fit together, and how to tell which one you're missing.
What a planning and mapping tool is for
Layers you can switch on: planning applications and constraints, title boundaries, ownership, strategic land, comparables, utilities. If you source land or development sites, you'll want one, and nothing on this page says otherwise.
Where its job ends and yours begins
A planning tool's job is done when you know what you could build. The question that costs money comes next: with these works, this finance and this exit, what's the most you can pay and still make your margin? That number is yours to defend to a lender, a partner, or yourself, and it has to come from arithmetic you can show.
What PropertyPredator does
- Back-solves the maximum offer from the margin you need, with every cost line shown
- Works out stamp duty inside the appraisal for England and Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales
- Takes the end value from real sold prices on the street, not asking prices
- Names the company behind a title and its directors, for England, Wales and Scotland, and drafts the letter
- Flags Article 4, conservation and listed-building constraints for English addresses
- Saves the deal with its figures: pipeline and PDF reports
If you already pay for a planning platform, PropertyPredator sits after it. Find the site there; bring the address here for the number. See how it works, with the working shown →
Finding a deal is the easy half.
Whichever category you buy from, the expensive mistake comes when you decide what to offer. Overpay once by £10,000 and no subscription saving gets it back. So before you pay for any tool, run this on a property you already know.
- 1 · Pick a property you know the answers for.One where you know the owner, what it sold for and what's happened to it since. You're marking the tool's homework, not learning the property.
- 2 · Who owns it?Ask for the company behind the title and the people who run it. In PropertyPredator: Owner X-Ray names the company and its directors, for England, Wales and Scotland. A private owner's name is only on the official register copy.
- 3 · What's it really worth?Ask where the end value comes from. In PropertyPredator: real sold prices on the street, not asking prices.
- 4 · What's the most you should pay?Ask for a maximum offer worked back from the margin you need, with every cost line shown. In PropertyPredator: the Deal Analyser back-solves it, and your first one is free.
- 5 · Can you defend it tomorrow?Save the deal with its figures and come back to it. In PropertyPredator: saved deals, a pipeline and PDF reports, so the number you offered is the number you can show.
Weighing a specific product? PropertyPredator vs Searchland · PropertyPredator vs LandTech · PropertyPredator vs Nimbus Maps
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