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Underwriting & Analysis

Underwriting & Analysis · Playbook 14

Think like an investment committee.

Most agents run their next deal through a single chat reply. An investment committee asks three separate questions: what does the market say, what do the documents say, and what do the numbers do under stress. Three connected systems split that answer back out.


Why this matters.

A single chat reply blends the market view, the document review, and the underwriting into one paragraph. It reads convincing. The decision behind it is undefended. Splitting the question back into three layers, live research, cross-document reasoning, and financial modelling, produces something closer to a real investment memo.
An investment committee asks three questions. A chat reply gives one blended answer.

Research. Reason. Underwrite.

01

Pull a sourced market view

Use a live research connector to gather supply pipeline, recent transaction prices, comparable activity, and rental trends, every claim anchored to a citation.

02

Reason across the full document pack

Load the brochure, contract, and any market notes into a document tool and ask it to cross-reference, not summarise in isolation, every document against every other.

03

Run the underwriting layer

Compute total cost to close, cash-on-cash, net yield, and stress test against delay, vacancy, and a wider exit assumption.

04

Compose the memo

Combine the market view, the risk register, and the underwriting into one document with a recommendation and named conditions.

The investment memo prompt
Compose a full investment memo synthesising the market view, the document risk register, and the underwriting. Structure: executive summary with recommendation, market view, top three risks by severity, underwriting table, stress test, and a recommendation with conditions, not just a verdict.

What it still gets wrong.

i.

Sourced is not the same as right

Citations aren't truth. Read the source list; two or three top citations should come from publishers you'd already trust.

ii.

The risk register isn't the diligence

It reads what's in the pack, not what a seller left out. A separate legal review and public-record search still matter.

iii.

The underwriting holds assumptions, not truth

Pressure-test the rent and exit assumptions before treating the recommendation as reliable.

iv.

Conditions matter more than the verdict

A memo that ends with 'proceed if X holds' is useful every time the deal changes. A bare yes or no is useful once.


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