What a house is worth when you can prove its history

A buyer viewing a villa is buying two things: what they can see, and what they cannot.

What they can see is priced by the market. What they cannot see — the state of the roof structure, the age of the waterproofing, what the buried services are made of, the history of water ingress — is priced on doubt. And in property, doubt is always paid for by the seller.

I. How the uncertainty discount works

A rational buyer prices in the works they expect. With no information at all, they do not assume the average: they assume the reasonable worst.

A twenty-five-year-old roof about which nothing is known is treated as a roof needing replacement. The same roof, documented by a roofer's report from last year and three traced maintenance visits, is treated as a maintained roof.

The gap between the two, on a villa on the Bay, runs to tens of thousands of euros — and avoiding it costs no more than assembling a folder.

The mechanism also works on time. A documented property reassures faster, which matters particularly in a second-home market where buyers often decide over a couple of viewings, between two weekends.

II. What a serious record contains

We build this record for every house in our care. Here is its structure.

I. Identity of the property. Plans, areas, year of construction, permissions and consents, ownership history, easements, estate or association rules where applicable.

II. Services and equipment. Location plan for valves, consumer unit, water meter, drainage chambers. Make, model, year of installation and commissioning date for every item: boiler, heat pump, cylinder, softener, ventilation, pool pump, motors.

III. Intervention history. Every job dated, with the firm, the amount, the reason and the warranty. This is the heart of the record.

IV. Visit reports. Periodic reports with dated photographs. This is the item that proves continuity of supervision, and the one insurers ask for after a claim.

V. Surveys and statutory checks. Energy performance certificate, mandatory surveys, drainage inspections, boiler service certificates, chimney sweeping, pool safety verification.

VI. Live warranties. Ten-year and two-year cover, manufacturer warranties on equipment, with firms' details and expiry dates.

VII. Trusted suppliers. The firms that know the house, with their trade and the history of their work. This is the thing a buyer cannot purchase anywhere else.

III. The record's role in a claim

This is the most concrete use, and the one nobody thinks of when assembling it.

After a claim, an insurer may seek to establish a maintenance failure in order to reduce settlement. Where the burden of proof lies varies, but in practice an owner producing dated visit reports, current service certificates and a works history is in an incomparably stronger position than one producing a statement of good faith.

The classic example is storm damage. A tile torn off is a weather event; a roof shown to have gone fifteen years without maintenance becomes a maintenance failure. The difference between those two characterisations is a folder.

IV. Succession, the family-house case

Around the Bay, many villas have been held for two or three generations. Knowledge of the house then sits with one person, often the oldest, and it is almost always oral.

Where the irrigation shut-off valve is. Who redid the roof, and in what year. Why the third bedroom was insulated internally. Which firm installed the septic tank and where the chambers are. What must never be planted in that spot because of the drain.

That knowledge disappears at a stroke. Heirs then take on a house they know emotionally and not at all technically, and the first years are expensive: they rediscover the property through its failures.

Building the record while the person who knows is still there is probably the most profitable act of estate management there is. It costs only time, and it saves a decade of guesswork. We cover the other aspects in The family house in joint ownership.

V. How to start from nothing

Most owners we meet start from zero, or from three badly sorted folders. Here is the order to begin in, from most useful to least urgent.

1. Photograph the technical equipment: consumer unit open and labelled, valves, meters, plant room, chambers. One hour of work, immediate value.
2. Gather the last ten years of invoices, filed by item rather than by date.
3. Record equipment ages, even approximately. A data plate almost always carries a year.
4. List the firms that have worked on the house, with what they did.
5. Draw a rough plan of the buried services — irrigation, drainage, garden electrics, pool. One almost never exists, and it is worth its weight at the first excavation.
6. Start the visit report now. The past cannot be reconstructed; the future history begins today.