Reading your village, town and city

Your Name:

Place you live or nearest big village, town or city:

Place you work or nearest big village, town or city:

Occupation:

Your interests:

Have you ever carried out any work on anything involved with dilapidations before?

Understanding or being able to read how a village, town and city has developed is very important when looking for opportunities, assessing development potential, carrying out a dilapidations schedule, a schedule of condition or a building survey (formerly known as a structural survey). The information can be used to ensure the property is being purchased or developed in the right area, or in the case of dilapidations that the right standard of repair has been carried out.

Find a good pub or an ex-pub or a leisure facility, such as a cinema, sports centre, church, etc

Think about what type of pub it is, is it food led, is it drink led, is it a destination pub (does it have music or something like that that would mean people travel to it), what facilities does it have, and a summary of the construction; what was the pub previously, or was it specially built? All these things help to build a picture of the area the pub is in.

How much do you think the pub is worth?

Do you think it is freehold or leasehold?

What responsibilities do you think the people have if it is leasehold?

Find a primary, a secondary and a tertiary shop

Primary is normally a high street location, secondary is normally just off the high street location, definitely not within a shopping centre, and tertiary are all the remaining shops. In each case write down the location and the type of construction: is it a purpose built retail unit, converted retail unit, the roof, walls and facilities.

Think about how much it is worth, whether the property is leased and what the responsibilities will be with regard to the lease.

Find an industrial unit in a primary, secondary and tertiary location (is this a trick question?)

In each case write down the location and the type of construction: is it purpose built or converted, roof, walls and facilities.

Take a guesstimate at what you think it is worth, or what you think the rental value is.

What responsibilities would they have if the property is leased?

Local operators: e s tate agents, commercial agents and chartered surveyors

Whilst on your travels you can also notice any local operators in the property market and note names and phone numbers, and what they are of course.

To find the market values of the property and typical rentals ring commercial agents to find out.

Use a building to look more closely at

Choose one of buildings that you have visited. Look more closely at it, filling out the site notes, thinking what type of construction, what condition it is in, where you can't see things, when you have to make assumptions, where you don't have access.

• Think about how it is best to record this information.

• Would photos help?

• Would sketches help, or would dictating any information that you spot about the property help?

• Complete the site notes and return back to lecture in your groups.

You may be interested in these other articles:

Estate Agents

Estate Agent, There is no point being honest

Property Acquisition Companies

Property Investors Wanted

Property Management - It's all about cash flow

We hope this helps you but if you want any further independent expert advice from a chartered surveyor with regard to structural surveys, building surveys, structural reports, engineers reports, dilapidations claims, specific defects reports, structural surveys, home buyers reports or any other property matters please contact 0800 298 5424 for a chartered surveyor to give you a call back.

If you have a commercial leasehold or freehold then you may wish to look at our Dilapidations Website at www.DilapsHelp.com and for Disputes go to our Disputes Help site www.DisputesHelp.com .

We hope you found the article of use and if you have any experiences that you feel should be added to this article that would benefit others, or you feel that some of the information that we have put is wrong then please do not hesitate to contact us (we are only human).

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