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A hand marking up a commercial lease. Clause 12, Option to Tax, is circled in red pen with £120,000 written beside it; a spreadsheet is open on a laptop behind.

The Commercial Deal Check

Do you really know the commercial property you're buying and whether you should — at that price? We do.

A fixed-fee check on one commercial property — whether you're bidding at auction, buying by agreement, or already own it and want it read properly: the tenant's accounts, the VAT position, the full cost of holding it, and what you do if the tenant leaves. You get a written assessment, the financial model behind it, and a call to talk it through.

From £1,250  exact fee agreed on the call, fixed from there — never by the hour 5 working days  from a complete start Starts with a short call  15 minutes, no charge
Book a call to discuss or email ag@ubiqa.uk

On one auction lot, £600,000 guide: an option to tax buried on page 140 of the legal pack — £120,000 of VAT due on completion, not in the catalogue. It hides just as easily in an agreed purchase. That's the kind of thing this catches.

Who's actually checking this?

A commercial purchase gets plenty of specialist attention — a solicitor on the legal title and the pack, a surveyor on the building, often a valuer, a broker, an accountant. Each one checks their slice and signs it off. None of them is paid to put the slices together.

So the legal can be sound, the building sound, the survey fine — and the deal still not work, because the tenant's accounts are thin, or an option to tax adds 20%, or a void would cost more than a year's rent. Whether the whole thing stacks, at this price, with this tenant, once every cost is in — that's the question with no owner. It's the one this answers.

The questionSolicitorSurveyorThe Deal Check
Is the legal title clean, and do the covenants bite?Yes — the legal opinion—Reads the title and covenants for risk; brings in a solicitor to price anything that does
Is the building sound?—YesRelies on your surveyor
Can the tenant actually pay the rent?NoNoYes — from the filed accounts
Is the VAT position clear?Flags it as a fact—Yes — with the number
Do all the costs and risks add up to a deal, at this price?NoNoYes

Plenty of people check a commercial deal, and each hands back their slice — the title, the building, the lending. Nobody's job is to stack the slices into one answer: does this work, at this price, with this tenant? That's what this is.

What a check like this turns up

Three situations from Ubiqa's due diligence work — names changed, some figures illustrative, the risks exactly as they come up. Each is something the buyer would not have found on their own read, and each would have cost far more than the fee.

01 · The cost that isn't on the price

£120,000 of VAT, disclosed on page 140

A landlord was about to bid £600,000 on a commercial auction lot. Deep in the legal pack, in the lease: the seller had exercised an option to tax. That adds 20% VAT to the price — due in full on completion — and drags the stamp duty up with it. None of it was in the guide.

The actual clause: 'Lease Agreement – Clause 12: Option to Tax', with the option to tax circled in red pen and £120,000 written beside it.
Clause 12, as it appeared in the pack.
Guide price
£600,000
VAT — option to tax, payable on completion
+£120,000
What you're actually committing to
£720,000

The check tells you where the option to tax sits, what it adds, and whether the deal still stacks with it in.

02 · The problem in the searches

A lender that walked away the week of completion

A block of flats near Manchester Piccadilly, at auction, guide price well under the block's value once let. The pack had the title and the special conditions but not the full local authority and environmental searches — the buyer's solicitor planned to cover the gap with indemnity insurance. He won the bid, put 10% down, and had a mortgage agreed.

Then the lender ran its own searches: two of the flats were an unauthorised conversion with a live planning enforcement notice against them. Indemnity insurance doesn't cover a notice that's already been served, so the lender pulled out — four days before completion. To keep the deposit he completed on bridging instead: about £450,000 at roughly 1% a month plus fees, close to £40,000 over the eight months it took to regularise the planning and refinance.

The searches are where the deal-breakers usually sit — an enforcement notice, contaminated ground, a public sewer under the building with no build-over agreement, an access that isn't in the title. A check lists what the pack leaves out and what it turns up, before you've exchanged and it's yours to fund.

03 · "Standard clause, ignore it"

Japanese knotweed, found 15 minutes before the auction

Two mixed-use buildings in Reading — a restaurant, a charity, strong footfall, guide price well under market. The buyer's solicitor reviewed the pack for £500 and flagged one thing: a note about possible Japanese knotweed, which on a follow-up call they played down as a standard clause with nothing behind it. Most people would have bid. She booked an independent knotweed survey instead — and fifteen minutes before the auction was told the site was heavily infested.

On a site this size, with buildings to excavate around, that isn't a spraying job — it's dig-out and licensed off-site disposal with an insurance-backed guarantee: budget £80,000–£150,000. And no mainstream lender touches a knotweed-affected property until the works are done and guaranteed, so both the purchase and the remediation would have needed specialist finance at a premium. The discount in the guide price — and a good deal more — was gone. The deal didn't stack.

A solicitor noting a clause isn't the same as someone checking whether it's real. The check reports knotweed cases logged near the property and says when a dedicated survey is worth it — before you commit to a number that only works if the ground is clean.

None of these is one discipline. They sit between the solicitor, the surveyor and the lender — which is exactly where things get missed. That gap is what the Deal Check reads.

Who I am

I own commercial property. I bought an office in Croydon knowing the location was weak, so before I committed I underwrote it against six separate exit routes, not just the conversion I hoped for. The PD route was refused twice. The asset still worked, because the other five had already been tested and one of them held.

Before that, reading property deals was the job — at the top end. Eight years on listed property companies, latterly as the real estate lead in Deloitte's audit practice, working across listed REITs and the largest private real estate groups in the UK — the ones with the sharpest due diligence in the market, and I sat close enough to it to know what real rigour looks like. I'm a chartered accountant, and I've read company accounts for nineteen years: the yield, the ERV, whether the RICS valuation actually held up. A £500m bond placement, a reverse takeover, a US listing — I've been through all three. The Deal Check is that same discipline, on your one building.

Anna Gurzhii standing outside a distribution unit, a parked van and loading bays behind her.
Anna Gurzhii, FCCA — Ubiqa Ltd. Commercial property owner; formerly real estate lead in Deloitte's audit practice.

No commission, no sale, no side

I don't sell property and I don't take a commission. There's nothing I'm trying to get you into. If the deal doesn't stack, I've no reason not to say so.

Can they actually pay the rent?

Four questions. A plain-English read-out. No verdict — that needs the filed accounts.

Tenant Covenant Quick-Check

What the lease is really sitting on

1 · What kind of business is the tenant?
2 · How long have they been in occupation?
3 · What have you actually seen of their accounts?
4 · Years left on the lease?

Indicative only — not a credit assessment or advice.

What's covered, and what you get

  • The tenant's filed accounts, in plain English — can they pay the rent, for how long, on what evidence. The one nobody else does.
  • The lease and the break clauses — what's actually promised, and what happens at the break.
  • The whole cost of owning it — VAT and option to tax, stamp duty (plus the buyer's premium on an auction lot), empty rates, service charge, dilapidations.
  • What a void really costs on this unit, and two or three realistic exit routes for the strategy you're planning.
  • The legal title and its covenants — read for the risks that limit your plans, with a solicitor brought in to price anything that bites. Plus location, the property itself, planning, and the standard searches — knotweed, asbestos, flood, environmental.
  • A house view on whether it stacks, and the workings behind it, so you learn the building as you read.

What you get — all in the fee

  1. A written assessment (PDF). Executive summary and the house view; the whole number; the tenant; void cost and exit routes; location and property; legal and search summary; scope and limits.
  2. A financial model (spreadsheet). Comparables, rateable value, rent and yield, the cost stack, the void model — change an assumption and watch it move.
  3. A call to talk it through. 30 minutes after you've read it, booked from a link in the delivery email.

What it isn't

You get a view on whether the deal stacks — a considered one, based on the evidence, years spent pulling apart property valuations for a living, and my own judgement. It's not a Red Book valuation and it doesn't put an open-market figure on the property — I spent long enough auditing those to know where that line sits. Not a building survey. Not legal advice — I read the legal title and the covenants for risk, but the opinion is your solicitor's, and I bring one in to price anything that bites. Your surveyor does the building, and you'll read it and the area better than I will. This is the one question none of them answers: does it stack?

Confidential

What you send me, and the fact you asked for a check at all, stays between us. I don't share the paperwork or the report with anyone, and the report is yours — not to be passed on or relied on by anyone else without my written agreement. Terms.

"I'll just get a new tenant in"

In residential a void is three to six weeks and you solve it. Drag the slider.

Void Exposure Slider

What an empty commercial unit costs while you're finding the next tenant

6 months
Use class — sets the empty-rates relief period
£
£
Assumptions — service charge & insurance while empty
£
£
Cost of the void
£33,500

It's lost rent plus a five-figure rates bill that starts after the relief period and doesn't stop. "I'll just get a new tenant in" is the most expensive sentence in this segment. The Deal Check models this on your actual unit and gives you two or three realistic exits.

Figures apply to England. Indicative only — rates as at 2026.

What if you tell me not to buy it?

Most of the time that's not the answer. It's buy it at a different number, or with a rent deposit, or with something fixed first. If it genuinely doesn't stack, you'll have saved a hundred times the fee — and you'll know exactly why.

How it works

It starts with a short call. No prep, no charge, no pitch.

  1. Book a 15-minute call. Tell me what you're looking at — an auction lot, an agreed purchase, or a unit you already own. I'll say whether it's the kind of deal the check is built for, and give you a fixed fee for it. No charge for the call.
  2. Pay and send the paperwork. I send a payment link (card or Apple / Google Pay); you send the address, the legal pack or sales pack, and a line on your strategy and exit routes.
  3. Five working days. From the point I have both the payment and everything I need. If something's missing, the clock pauses and I tell you what's outstanding.
  4. The report, the model, and a call. A written assessment, the spreadsheet behind it, and a 30-minute call once you've read it — all in the fee.
From £1,250
The fee depends on the deal — the property, the paperwork, how much there is to work through. £1,250 is the starting point. You get the exact number on the call, before any work, and it's fixed from there — never by the hour, nothing added later. Ubiqa Ltd is not VAT registered, so there's no VAT on top.

Book your call

Fifteen minutes. Bring the address and your deadline if you have one — auction date, exchange, or when you need to decide.

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Book a call to discuss →

or email ag@ubiqa.uk

Cancellation and refund position: Terms. I take a limited number of these each week so they get done properly and fast.

Questions

I'm not buying at auction — is this still for me?
Yes. Auction lots have the hardest deadline, so that's where people feel it most, but the check is the same whether you're bidding, buying by agreement, or already own the unit. I set out realistic income strategies and exit routes for the property, and check your expected purchase price, yield, and — where it's relevant — gross development value against the evidence. None of that depends on how you're buying.
What are you going to tell me that I don't already know?
I've spent nineteen years reading leases, financial statements and debt agreements — the last twelve of them on auction and sales packs — and there's always something new. A sublease hidden inside an under-rented unit. A covenant breach nobody flagged. Tenant arrears. A planning constraint or a council notice buried in the pack. And that's before the location itself: the street and area demographics against what you actually want to do with it and who you'd let it to, what the council's planning nearby, comparable rents and sale prices, real void times in the area, the tenant's own numbers if it's let, the lease terms, the title covenants, the planning history — then whether all of that still supports the price you're paying. One legal pack had an option to tax on page 140 worth £120,000 that wasn't in the guide price. That's the kind of thing this catches — and it's rarely just one thing.
My solicitor's already doing all this.
Your solicitor tells you whether you can safely own it — title, searches, the legal pack. They don't tell you whether you should, at that price. Nobody in your transaction is answering that.
£1,250 is a lot for a report.
The fee starts at £1,250 and depends on the deal — but on a £600k purchase even the top end is a fraction of a percent of what you're committing, and less than the buyer's premium alone, which buys you nothing. It's the one spend in the whole transaction that could stop a mistake. You get the number on the call, before any work — fixed from there, no VAT.
The auction's on the 14th — there isn't time. / We're due to exchange next week.
Book the call today. Five working days from when I've got what I need to start — the address, the paperwork, and a line on what you're trying to do with it. Send that and you'll have it before your date; better to know on the 12th than find out on the 15th.
Is this confidential?
Yes. The paperwork you send and the report I write stay between us — I don't pass either to anyone, and the report is for you, not to be relied on by a third party without my written agreement. It's in the terms.
What if you tell me not to buy it?
Most of the time that's not the answer — it's buy it at a different number, or with something fixed first. And if it genuinely doesn't stack, you'll know exactly why, and you'll have saved a lot more than the fee.
I've been doing this twenty years.
You have, and it shows in how you read a building and a deal. What I add sits underneath that: the tenant's accounts and lease, the title covenants and planning history, the comparables and void numbers for the area, and whether the price, the yield and — where it's relevant — the development value actually stack up against all of it. Twenty years tells you when something feels right. This tells you exactly why, with the evidence behind it.
Do I have to have a call first?
Yes — a short one, fifteen minutes, no charge. I use it to check the deal's the kind of thing the check is built for before you pay anything, and to answer whatever you want to ask. There's also a longer call included after you get the report, to talk the findings through.