Question 1

What exactly arrives, and in what format?

Accepted Answer

A PDF of about sixty pages, typeset rather than generated – cover, executive summary, the peninsula mapped and the price surface, the six readings and how they were weighted, the simulation, the value drivers ranked, the acquisition and ownership costs, the Negotiation Brief, and ten appendices including every recorded sale used. Two of those parts are written to be separated from the rest: the four-page Negotiation Brief, and the VERA Notaire Brief. You are meant to detach them and hand them over.

Question 2

What is the difference between the €2,000 Pre-offer Brief and the €4,500 Valuation Brief?

Accepted Answer

Effort, and what may honestly be concluded from it. The brief is four pages read off the register and the cadastre: where the asking rate sits among the 194 qualifying sales, what those sales restate to at that point on the peninsula, what has changed hands on that street, and the questions the public record raises about the advertisement. Nobody goes inside, nothing is measured, and no value is put on the house. The Valuation Brief is sixty pages and does put a number on it – six independent readings weighted against each other, a million-trial simulation, a published error rate from leave-one-out testing, a Negotiation Brief and the cost of ownership. Use the Pre-offer Brief to decide which of the villas you are looking at deserves the Valuation Brief. Most will not.

Question 3

Can I see the Valuation Brief before I pay €4,500?

Accepted Answer

Yes – free. Inside the Briefs holds a sample of every VERA Brief in the standard template, the Valuation Brief included, on the villa used as the case study on this site with its address withheld. Read it, check the arithmetic, form a view, and if you are not convinced, commission nothing.

Question 4

How is this different from an agent’s valuation?

Accepted Answer

An agent’s figure is an asking price: a starting position, set in competition for the instruction, by someone paid a percentage of what you eventually pay. It may well be a good figure. It was simply produced for a different purpose than yours. A VERA valuation is built from prices recorded at completion, and the Valuation Brief lists every one of them so the working can be checked – including by the other side, which is rather the point.

Question 5

Where does the data come from, and is it complete?

Accepted Answer

Public French sources: the Demandes de Valeurs Foncières transaction register published by the tax authority, the Etalab open cadastre, the Base Adresse Nationale for address matching, and INSEE. Pool counts come from the Ville d’Antibes planning system. It is not complete, and the Valuation Brief says so. DVF is published in arrears, sales through share transfers in an SCI do not appear as property transactions at all, and the recorded floor area is a fiscal figure rather than a surveyed one. Where the register is thin or silent, the Valuation Brief states it rather than smoothing over it.

Question 6

How accurate is it, really?

Accepted Answer

Tested by holding sales out of the model and asking it to price what it had not seen: a 25% median error across all 221 qualifying sales, and 23% when predicting only the most recent 128 using all of them as evidence – which is the question a buyer today is actually asking. Against 30% for the flat price-per-square-metre rule most people use in their heads. That is an honest out-of-sample figure across all properties, and it is not small. For a specific house it is tighter, because the measured area, the plot, the condition and the street are known rather than assumed. That is why the Valuation Brief gives you a range and a probability instead of a single confident number – and why a valuation claiming accuracy to the euro should worry you.

Question 7

Do you need to visit the property?

Accepted Answer

No. Send the address or the listing link. Photographs, floor plans, the surveyor’s measurement and the vendor’s diagnostic file sharpen the condition and area assumptions considerably, and the Valuation Brief states plainly which assumptions it has had to make and how far the answer moves if they are wrong. If you would rather we saw it, say so and we will discuss it. It is not included in the fee.

Question 8

When should I commission it?

Accepted Answer

Before you make an offer. Afterwards you are arguing against a number you have already named, and the Valuation Brief can only tell you what it would have told you a week earlier. If a property is being marketed at a price you suspect is ambitious, that suspicion is the moment – not the counter-offer. There is a second reason to be early. The vendor’s diagnostic file expires on a schedule of its own: the risk statement must be under six months old at the promesse, the termite report the same, and the lead report lasts a year where lead was found. Knowing which have lapsed is a condition you attach to the offer, not a surprise you absorb at signature.

Question 9

Is the Valuation Brief usable in a negotiation?

Accepted Answer

It is written to be handed over. The Negotiation Brief sets out an opening position with a number attached, a justified range, a second move that can be defended rather than split down the middle, a walk-away price, and the arguments in the order the vendor’s agent will meet them. An offer with the comparable schedule attached cannot be dismissed as a low-ball. It forces the counter to answer the evidence.

Question 10

What if the seller’s agent disputes your figures?

Accepted Answer

Good – that is the conversation the Valuation Brief is built for. Every recorded sale it relies on is listed with date, area, price and rate, so a disputed comparable can be looked up rather than asserted. If the agent produces a sale that is not in the schedule, ask for the address and the date; if it is real and recorded, we will tell you why it was excluded or include it. We would rather be corrected than be wrong. If a material error is shown, the Valuation Brief is re-issued at no charge.

Question 11

I am selling, not buying. Is it useful?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and for the same reason. The evidence that supports a buyer’s position supports a defensible asking price, and a vendor is much better off knowing in advance where an informed buyer’s arguments are going to come from. Several of the Valuation Brief’s sections read differently from that side of the table – the value drivers in particular tell you which of your own weaknesses are worth fixing before you market.

Question 12

Is this a formal valuation for a bank, a court or the tax authority?

Accepted Answer

No. It is an independent, evidence-based opinion of market value written to the structure of the International Valuation Standards, prepared for a buyer or a vendor. It is not a Red Book valuation, it has not been signed by a RICS Registered Valuer, no structural survey has been carried out, and it must not be relied on by a lender or for tax assessment. If you need one of those, you need a different professional, and we will say so rather than sell you this instead.

Question 13

Who else sees my Valuation Brief, or the fact that I commissioned one?

Accepted Answer

Nobody. We do not tell agents, we do not tell vendors, and we do not publish or resell client work. The Valuation Brief is yours to show to whomever you choose. The site itself sets no cookies and runs no analytics, so browsing it leaves no record with us. The typefaces are served from our own server, so no request leaves the site when a page is read.

Question 14

What areas do you cover?

Accepted Answer

The Cap d’Antibes in full – the peninsula south of the isthmus, where every Brief is available today. VERA holds the register data for the Cap d’Antibes, with the rest of France following as each département is loaded and checked, and on request we prepare the same Briefs for any property in France with an asking price above €2 million. Sales records cover France except Alsace, Moselle and Mayotte, where the state does not publish them. A valuation is only as good as the evidence that supports it, so outside the Cap we tell you first what the record holds for your property.

Question 15

Can you value more than one property?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The second and each subsequent property for the same client is €2,250 rather than €4,500, because the engine for the peninsula is already built and the marginal work is the house itself. If you are comparing three or four candidates, valuing them together is usually the cheapest way to find out which one is actually the bargain.

Know what it’s worth. Before you negotiate.

One villa. €1,174,000 between the asking price and the evidence.

One evidence base. A Brief for every decision.

Price Position BriefBuilt in your browser

Insurance BriefFor you and your insurer

Parcel BriefThe plot, from the record

Apartment BriefThe flat’s record before you visit

Pre-offer BriefBefore you make an offer

Vendor BriefBefore you set the price

Valuation BriefSixty pages, written to be handed across the table

Research BriefYour own question

Six independent readings. One defensible answer.

Public sources, read automatically

Six readings, not one opinion

A range, with the odds attached

The Cap in full.

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The most valuable time to know the answer is before you make the offer.