Methodology
How the report engine actually works
What we check, where it comes from, and what we can't confirm.
Live data sources
Modelled or guessed checks
Sale history reaches back to
The lens
Look through the surface
A viewing shows you bricks, paint and a tidy garden. The report engine reads what the eye cannot: tenure, flood zones, planning constraints, and the health of the company that owns the title.
The premise
Why PropM8
exists
~1 in 3
UK property sales collapse before completion.
We hold ourselves to our own standard
Source: Quick Move Now fall-through index. 28.8% of UK sales fell through before completion in 2024 and 26% across 2025, peaking at 41% in Q2 2025. The Open Property Data Association's 2026 study of 5,000 recent movers puts it higher still: 56% of sales collapse after an offer is accepted. Our “roughly 1 in 3” headline is a plain rounding of that published range, not a modelled figure.
Source: House Buyer Bureau · Santander. The average failed purchase costs the buyer around £3,544 in sunk legal, survey and mortgage fees (House Buyer Bureau). Santander's research puts the total cost of collapsed UK transactions at roughly £8.6bn a year across the market. Any £ figure we quote on this site traces back to one of these sources.
The checks · live sources
Every check is wired to a
real public data source
Ownership & sale history
HM Land Registry: Price Paid Data
Every registered residential sale in England & Wales since 1995, including tenure (freehold or leasehold) and sale history for individually-owned homes.
Energy & building fabric
EPC Register (Open Data Communities)
Energy performance rating, floor area, and building type.
River & sea flood zones
Environment Agency flood risk
River and sea flood zone (1, 2, 3, 3a or 3b), with a planning.data.gov.uk flood-risk-zone fallback where the primary lookup doesn't return a result.
The proof · drag the line
Drag to see what we see
Every source is a live lookup, not a model.
The limits
What we can't confirm yet
Each of these comes back as “not yet confirmed” in your report, on purpose.
Restrictive covenants
These can't be confirmed from public data. We say so plainly and point you to the solicitor's Official Copy review during conveyancing, which is where they're actually surfaced.
Where to check → Solicitor · Official Copy
Building safety, high-rise status & EWS1
No public register gives a reliable answer here. A qualified surveyor's assessment is the only way to confirm this properly.
Where to check → Qualified surveyor
Service charge, ground rent & council tax band
Not covered by any of the sources above. These come from the seller, the agent, or the local authority directly.
Where to check → Seller · Agent · Council
Current owner identity for company-held titles
We check Companies House when a registered proprietor is a UK company, and Price Paid Data gives sale history for individually-owned homes, but we don't yet offer a general "who currently owns this property" lookup across all titles.
Where to check → Not yet a general lookup
General residential comparable pricing
The comparables database behind PropM8 today is drawn from commercial-property deals, such as care homes, hotels and pubs, so an ordinary house or flat will usually come back with no comparables rather than a guessed figure.
Where to check → Commercial comps only, for now
Why we're transparent about this
We show our sources and our gaps in the same place.