Off-plan sales: what the sold data can and cannot tell you
Off-plan sales are agreed months before they appear anywhere public — the Land Registry records the completion, long after the reservation. Reading new-build sold data well means understanding that lag.
Reading competitor schemes through the lag
A cluster of completions in one month usually marks a construction phase handover, not a burst of demand — those sales were agreed across the preceding year. The steadier signal is the span: first completion to last, divided into total units, gives the true absorption rate. A scheme that completed 40 units inside 14 months was genuinely selling ~3/month; one that took 40 months was not, whatever its launch-weekend press release said.
Pricing off-plan from evidence
- Anchor to completed local new-build £/sqft, indexed to today — that is what buyers' surveyors will benchmark against at valuation.
- Early releases typically price slightly under the evidence to build momentum; later phases harvest the premium. The evidence range's low end is your launch guide, the high end your phase-three ambition.
- Mortgage valuers are conservative on off-plan; pricing far above the registered evidence invites down-valuations that unravel chains.
The honest caveat
Registered prices can include unrecorded incentives (carpets, stamp duty contributions) agreed off-plan — public data slightly overstates net achieved prices in incentive-heavy periods. Treat late-scheme completions of a slow site with particular suspicion.
Run this on a real site in under 60 seconds
Threshold turns 4.6 million official sold records into comparables, £/sqft ground-pricing maps, price prediction and a maximum land bid, from one pin. Free 7-day trial, no card.
Start free trial →Data referenced in Threshold is displayed under the Open Government Licence (HM Land Registry Price Paid Data, EPC Register, ONS, UK HPI). All figures produced by Threshold are statistical estimates for site appraisal, not RICS valuations.