How a Packet is made
The Engine.
Every Packet is made by one machine: more specialist agents than this page can show, working as one, and one person who signs what they find.
Scroll to take it apart
Cut open
Inside, everything moves at once.
The specialists work the building at the same time, each on its own part of it, each checked by another. Nothing waits its turn.
Taken apart
Every part is an agent.
The pistons are the specialists. The crankshaft is the chain that turns their work into one result. The flywheel is the Prosecution, whose whole job is to prove the rest wrong.
Open one
Step inside.
Nine agents are open to you, at work on the example building from the Firm page. They are nine of many. Press a name.
§ 01The reach of it
Everything thatcan be known,before you commit.
A buyer usually sees what the seller chose to send. The Engine starts from the whole record, and works inward to the one building that matters.
- 4.5 million
- land titles owned by companies, each with its owner and the date they bought
- 551,000
- industrial and warehouse premises, each with a rateable value, almost all with a floor area
- 5 million
- companies, so every tenant and every seller can be looked up
- 10,000
- simulated outcomes run on every building that can be priced, to test the price
- Nightly
- every industrial and logistics building in England and Wales, scored again
- 1
- person who reads every grade, and signs
§ 02Nine agents, at work
Watch them workon the example.
Each of these is at work on the hypothetical building from the Firm page. Open one, and see what it would put in the Packet.
These are nine of them, not all of them. The Engine runs many more, and more are added as it grows.
+And many more at work that are not shown here: flood, title, comparables, labour, the seller, energy, rival schemes, calibration, and on.
§ 04The order of work
From an addressto a signature.
- 01
Intake
An address and an asking price. Nothing else is needed to begin.
- 02
Collection
The record is gathered, held and fingerprinted, so any figure can be reopened months later.
- 03
The call sheet
What the record cannot answer goes to a person, with the exact question and who to ask.
- 04
The specialists
The specialists work the building at once, each on its own part of it, each checked by another.
- 05
The attack
The Prosecution attacks every conclusion. It can only make them more cautious.
- 06
The chain
Every finding is resolved into one result, and every number traced to its grade.
- 07
The signature
Sabian Woodyer reads every grade, and signs.
§ 05What the machine may not do
Rules writteninto the machine.
It may not invent a number.No rent, yield or floor area appears unless the record holds it, or a named person gave it.
It may not raise a grade.Judgement can weaken a conclusion. Nothing can strengthen one except more evidence.
It may not mistake silence for a clean result.A question nobody answered stays open, and is printed as open.
It may not decide it has finished.It stops when more work stops changing the answer, and not before.
It may refuse.If the evidence cannot support a price, the Packet says so and stops. It never fills the gap to look complete.
It may not sign.Only a person can. Every grade in every Packet is read and signed by Sabian Woodyer, who will take a call about any one of them.