Site due diligence: the checklist from cadastre to project proposal

Most bad property deals don’t lose money on the price — they lose it on something that wasn’t checked. An easement blocking the building zone. A soil contamination no one had seen. A development right that was smaller than the agent implied. Good due diligence is about finding those things before you bid, not after.

Here is the checklist a site should pass before it becomes a project proposal. It’s ordered so the cheapest checks can kill a deal first.

1. Development rights and planning

Start with what decides how big the project can be:

• Local plan — use, floor area ratio, building zones, height. Found in Plandata.dk.
• Municipal plan framework — the ceiling a future local plan could allow.
• Draft plans in preparation — can change the development right, and the municipality can impose a section 14 ban.
• Zone status — urban, rural or summer-house zone. Rural zone requires a permit for most projects.

If the development right can’t carry the project, you don’t need to check the rest.

2. Cadastre and boundaries

The floor area ratio is calculated on the cadastral site area — not on what the seller states. Check the cadastre at Geodatastyrelsen for the real area, and look at whether the site consists of several cadastral numbers that need to be merged or subdivided. Unresolved boundaries are a classic delay.

3. Registered encumbrances and rights

The land register holds the constraints that aren’t written anywhere else:

• Easements and declarations — building lines, utility routes, shared access roads, conservation provisions.
• Rights of use and pre-emption rights.
• Mortgages and charges to be settled on the deal.

A registered building line through the only viable building zone can topple the project on its own — and it only surfaces if you read the land register.

4. Soil contamination

Look the site up in the regional mapping (V1 and V2). V1 means suspected contamination, V2 means confirmed contamination. Both trigger requirements for investigation, clean-up or special conditions on a change of use — and can cost significant sums if the site is to be used for housing with sensitive use.

5. Utilities and capacity

A development right is worthless if the site can’t be serviced. Clarify access to and capacity in:

• Sewerage and wastewater — is the site connected, and is there capacity?
• Water, electricity and heating — including any obligation to connect to district heating.
• Road access — is there a legal access, or does it need to be established?
• Stormwater management — local infiltration is often a requirement.

6. Geotechnics and terrain

Bearing capacity, groundwater level and slope decide the foundation cost — one of the items that most often blows the budget. An early estimate from existing soil data and level conditions is enough to flag an expensive foundation before you bid.

7. Neighbours and objection risk

Shadow, overlooking and traffic are the most common reasons for neighbour complaints. Assess whether the project triggers a neighbour consultation, and whether there are conservation interests or associations in the area that typically object. It affects both the timeline and the likelihood of exemptions.

8. Economics and exit

Finally, everything comes together in a calculation: land price, development right in m², construction cost, financing and a realistic sale or rental level for the area. This is where the previous seven points become numbers — a soil contamination or an expensive foundation deducted from what you can bid.

The order is the point

The most valuable property of a checklist is that it lets you stop early. Most of the points above can be settled from public registers in a couple of hours — local plan, cadastre, land register, soil-contamination map — before you spend money on advisers. If a project gets a green light all the way down, it’s worth pursuing. If it falls at point 1 or 3, you’ve saved an expensive mistake.

That’s the order Arcili is built for: the public registers gathered on one screen, so a site can be screened in minutes, and only the promising ones go on to the expensive work.

Want to see a site run through the checklist? Book a walkthrough.