The Property Due Diligence Checklist We Run Before Any Client Wires Money

The order matters more than the list

Most buyers run their checks in the order the seller offers them. They see the property, they like it, they agree a price, and only then does anyone look at the paperwork.

By that point the buyer is emotionally committed and often financially committed through a deposit. Walking away costs something. That is exactly when verification stops being neutral.

We run the checks in reverse. The cheapest question to answer is whether the seller can legally sell, and it costs nothing but time. It has ended deals for our clients before anyone booked a flight.

First, the property itself

This group answers one question. Does the thing exist, in the form described, and does it belong to the person selling it.

• Title verified at the national land registry directly, not read from the sale contract. A contract is a promise. The registry is the record.
• Encumbrances checked. Mortgages, liens, unpaid tax, court claims and rights of way all travel with the property in most jurisdictions, not with the seller.
• Boundaries and plot area matched against the registry entry, not the brochure. Coastal plots are where these diverge most often.
• Planning permission and completion certificates confirmed as issued, not as applied for.
• Physical inspection carried out in person, by someone acting for the buyer. Photographs supplied by a seller are marketing, whatever they show.

Second, the counterparty

This group answers a different question. If something goes wrong, who is standing behind it, and can they actually complete.

On an off plan purchase this group matters more than the first one. You are not really buying a building at that stage. You are buying a developer’s ability to finish it.

• Developer track record checked against delivered projects, not announced ones. Handover dates on completed buildings tell you more than any brochure.
• Escrow account confirmed as registered for that specific project, and payments confirmed as going into it rather than to a company account.
• Corporate standing checked. A developer in financial distress is a risk to your deposit regardless of how good the location is.
• The agent’s payer identified. If the person advising you is paid by the seller, you have a salesperson, and their advice should be read that way.
• Any power of attorney scoped narrowly and in writing, limited to the specific transaction and the specific property.

Third, the numbers after everything

A yield quoted to a buyer is almost always gross. The costs that turn gross into net are not hidden. They are simply never included in the number that gets marketed.

In Dubai, service charges alone commonly run from AED 3 to AED 30 per square foot per year depending on the building, and prime towers with extensive facilities sit well above that. The Dubai Land Department publishes a service charge index building by building, searchable through the Dubai REST app. Very few buyers check it before they commit.

• Entry costs modelled in full. Transfer tax, registration, notary, legal and agency vary from roughly 5 percent in Albania to around 11 percent in parts of Spain.
• Annual running costs modelled. Service charges, management, maintenance, insurance and any ground rent.
• Vacancy assumed honestly. A property empty for six weeks a year is not earning for six weeks a year.
• Tax position checked in both countries. Where you are resident and where the property sits can both have a claim.
• Currency exposure identified. Income in one currency and obligations in another is a position, whether or not you intended to take it.

The check almost nobody runs

The exit. Buyers model the purchase in detail and the sale not at all.

Ask who the next buyer is. In a market where a specific building type has been sold heavily to foreign investors, the resale pool may be the same foreign investors, and they may all want out in the same conditions.

Ask what selling costs. Agency commission on disposal runs around 2 percent in Dubai and around 5 percent plus tax in Portugal. Ask how long a comparable unit in that building actually took to sell, not how long the agent expects it to take.

What to do with this list

You can run most of it yourself. The registry checks require a local lawyer acting for you rather than for the seller, and the inspection requires somebody physically present. Everything else is time and stubbornness.

The point is not that a purchase needs to survive fifteen checks to be a good one. It is that a buyer should know which checks were skipped, and decide that consciously rather than by default.

Independent advice. Clear numbers. No pressure to buy.