When you sell, the buyer does not ask for the floor plan
Photos bring them to the viewing. What you can show about the property’s history decides the negotiation.
The first half of a sale is visual: photos, layout, light. Then comes the second half, where a serious buyer sits down and starts asking. At that point looks stop mattering and answers start.
The questions every serious buyer asks
- When was the boiler last serviced?
- Has there ever been a leak? And if so, what happened about it.
- When were the windows, the water heater, the wiring done?
- What are the winter bills? Not roughly — actually.
- In a block: any planned works, what is the service charge, is there a loan on the building?
There are two kinds of answer. One is "I think three or four years ago". The other is "here is the list, here is the invoice". The difference is not only tone — the second answer saves you the negotiation, because there is nothing left to price as risk.
What the buyer is really buying
A property with an unknown history is a risk. The buyer cannot tell what the next two years hold, so they set aside a mental contingency — and deduct it from the offer. That contingency is almost always larger than what the real problems would cost. A documented history shrinks it.
It works the other way too: if you can show that the roof was redone three years ago, with an invoice and photos, that is not a claim, it is a fact. And it gets priced as one.
What to gather before you list
- A list of major works with years and invoices.
- The maintenance trail for the mechanicals: boiler, AC, water heater, flue.
- Warranty documents for anything still covered — that is concrete, transferable value.
- A year of utility figures, so you can quote instead of estimate.
- Building documents: rules, minutes of meetings about planned works.
The dossier that surprises the buyer
Put all of it into a single PDF and hand it over at the second viewing, and you do something almost nobody does: you prove you looked after the place. The effect does not come from the documents, it comes from what they say about you. Someone who has kept maintenance records for six years does not neglect the roof either.
In Housefolio that is one tap: the dossier export collects the log entries, dates, costs and attached invoices into a PDF.
And if you have nothing?
Then start now. Even a log begun six months before the sale beats nothing, because the recent work will at least be documented. For the older jobs, ask the trades for copies of the invoices — many can look them up.