Residential development appraisal

Know what you can pay for the land — and why.

Appraisal software for developers and promoters who have to defend the number. Sold comparables, build costs adjusted by BCIS location factors across 343 local authorities, and a residual land value you can put in front of a lender.

Request an invite Sign in

Works on top of Searchland — your own account required · Invite only while we open accounts a few at a time

The verdict bar: gross development value £2,820,000, total cost £2,202,663, net profit £617,337, net margin on GDV 21.9%, planning uplift profit −£49,628, verdict GO. — **A real appraisal, not a mock-up.** 8 units on 2.53 acres. Note the red tile: the promote-and-sell route loses £49,628 on this site, and the software says so beside the green GO rather than quietly leaving it out.

The problem

An appraisal takes an afternoon. Getting it wrong costs a year.

Most residual valuations are still built in a spreadsheet inherited from someone who left. The build rate is a guess dressed as a figure, the comparables are whatever was to hand, and nothing in the file says which is which.

Three hours per site

Rebuilt from scratch each time, because the last one was bent to fit a different scheme and nobody trusts it any more.

One rate for every house

A single £/sqft applied to a four-bed detached and a two-bed terrace, when the market pays for them on entirely different terms.

No record of the thin bits

A figure built on two sales looks exactly like one built on twenty, right up until someone asks in a credit committee.

Works with Searchland

It plugs into the Searchland you already pay for.

Loam is not another map. It is the appraisal that sits on top of the one you have — it reads the title, the boundary, the designations and the sold comparables straight out of Searchland and turns them into a land price you can act on.

You need a Searchland account

Without one, none of the lookups run. Loam still does the arithmetic, but you would be typing every address, boundary and sold price in by hand — the very job it exists to remove.

Your searches stay yours

You connect your own Searchland account once, and every search is billed to you at your own rate. We do not resell it, mark it up, or sit between you and your data provider — and what a lookup will cost is on screen before you press it.

One lookup fills the appraisal

Title, boundary, designations, distances and sold comparables arrive together and land in the right boxes. Nothing is copied from a map into a spreadsheet, so nothing is copied wrong — and a title bought once is never bought twice.

To be exact about it: the appraisal engine itself needs nothing at all — the cost library, the maths and the verdict run in your browser with the internet switched off, and you can type a whole scheme in by hand on a train. What needs Searchland is everything that saves you the typing. That is the point of it, so treat a Searchland subscription as a requirement rather than an optional extra.

How it works

Three steps, and it shows its working at every one.

Ten steps end to end, from the site and its comparables through to the two ways out of it. This is the spine.

Pull the site

Title, boundary, designations and sold comparables come back on one lookup. What it costs in credits is shown before you press it, and counted after.

Price the scheme from what actually sold

Achieved prices for that house type and bed count where the evidence supports it, size-banded rates where it does not — and the row tells you which one it used, in words.

Get a land price you can defend

Residual land value solved to land exactly on your own target margin, after SDLT, acquisition fees and finance. Headroom against your offer, in figures.

Appraisal summary: gross development value, construction, external works, contingency, professional fees, planning and contributions, abnormals, sales and marketing, finance, land, total costs, net profit, margin, break-even GDV and profit per unit. — Every line traceable to the step that produced it.

Why this one

Built to be argued with.

The point of an appraisal is not the number. It is being able to say where the number came from when somebody with money asks.

It tells you when the evidence is thin

A price built on two sales says so on the face of the figure. Nothing is quietly rounded into confidence it has not earned.

Real build costs, by authority

BCIS location factors from the VOA Rating Cost Guide across 343 local authorities, applied to your own base rate rather than a national average.

Both ways out, side by side

Build it out, or take it to consent and sell the land on. The comparison every site forces you to make, on one screen, in profit and in return on cash.

Fast enough to use on a maybe

A site you would not have bothered appraising is worth ten minutes here. That is where the ones nobody else looked at come from.

Your searches, your account

You connect your own Searchland account, so every lookup is billed to you at your own rate. We never sit between you and your data provider.

It works with the internet off

The appraisal engine is one self-contained file — no framework, no library, no font, no CDN. On a train, on a site visit, in a basement.

Access

By invitation, for now.

Accounts are opened a few at a time while the platform is finished. Tell us about the sites you appraise and, if it is a yes, an invitation arrives by email with a link to choose a password. There is no public sign-up.

We would rather have ten developers using it properly than a thousand who signed up once. Every request is read by a person, and you hear back either way — usually within a working day.

Already invited? Sign in.

Request an invitation

A name, a work email, and a line about what you would use it for.

Your name

Work email

Company optional

Are you a BuildUp member?

What would you use it for? optional, but it is what gets read first

Your details are used to decide on this request and to reply to it, and for nothing else. No mailing list, no sharing, and you can ask for them to be deleted at any time.

Request received. You will get an email either way, usually within a working day. If it is a yes, your invitation comes with it.

Security & data

Facts, not badges.

Everything below is a property of how the software is actually built, and can be checked. No logo wall, no certification we do not hold.

Your data is yours alone

Row-level security in the database: an account can read its own rows and no others. Not a filter in the application — a rule in the data layer.

Your provider key never reaches a browser

Encrypted with AES-256-GCM before storage, decrypted only on the server to make your request. Only the last four characters are ever shown again.

The appraisal runs on your machine

The desktop build calculates entirely in your browser with no network of any kind. A deal you never save is a deal that never left the room.

UK data protection

Governed by the law of England and Wales, under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

No third-party code in the engine

No framework, no analytics, no tag manager, no web font. Nothing on the appraisal page phones anywhere.

Take your deals with you

Every deal exports to a plain JSON file you can keep, and restores into any copy. No lock-in that depends on us existing.

Pricing

Agreed per firm while it is invite-only.

A flat monthly subscription for your account, settled when you are invited — no per-appraisal charge and no per-seat surprises. Published plans follow once the invite period ends.

One thing already decided: you connect your own Searchland account, so lookups are billed to you directly by Searchland at your own rate. Nothing you search is marked up or resold.

Questions

Asked often, answered plainly.

Do I need a Searchland account?

Not for the appraisal itself — every figure can be entered by hand and the maths is all yours. The lookups (title boundaries, designations, sold comparables, aerial photographs) come from Searchland, so those buttons need your own Searchland account connected. Your lookups are billed to your Searchland credits, not to us.

What does a lookup cost?

Every button that spends credits says its price before you press it, and a cost strip totals what a complete appraisal will run to. Nothing is ever fetched unasked, and anything already bought — a title, an aerial, a set of comparables — is remembered and never charged twice. There is a monthly meter you can set to your Searchland renewal date.

Where do my deals live?

In your browser first, always — the dashboard works with no internet at all — and carried up to your account so they follow you between machines. You can export every deal to a file of your own at any time, and import it back anywhere.

Can I put my company’s name on it?

Yes. Your company name, logo and accent colour go on the dashboard and on every printed pack — the appraisal you hand to a lender or an investor carries your brand, not ours.

How do I get access?

By invitation, for now — there is no public sign-up. Request an invitation and tell us a little about what you’d use it for; every request is read by a person. If it is a yes, an email arrives with a link to choose a password, and on your first sign-in you set your company name and colours and connect your Searchland account.

Is this a valuation?

No. It is decision support: it shows its working at every step precisely so you can argue with it. It is not legal, planning, financial, tax, investment or valuation advice, and it does not replace your professional judgement or your professional advisers.