Assess risk
Before a bank grants a loan, an insurer writes a policy or a lawyer gives an opinion, the risk picture around the property has to be known. This page goes through that picture point by point on a single property: what rests on it legally, what threatens it physically, and what it carries financially.
Five portals, one map
The list below is the same list a credit case or a due diligence has always consisted of. What is new is where the answers sit. The flood hazard zones were held by Norges vassdrags- og energidirektorat (NVE), the loose masses and the radon map by Norges geologiske undersøkelse (NGU), contaminated land by Miljødirektoratet, the building cases in the kommune's own archive and the ownership chain in Brønnøysundregistrene. Each lookup was its own portal with its own map extent, and none of them knew about the property you were working on.
Here they are layers in the same map, and the property is already identified. Two case handlers who open the same property should arrive at the same risk picture, and each surface should be traceable to one source with a known update date.
The example throughout this page is Nesgata 1 in Lillestrøm, the hotel by Norges Varemesse on the flat between Nitelva and the railway. The site hits several points on the list at once: flood hazard zones, the 1995 flood event, a protection structure, quick clay caution and marine clay. Contaminated land has no registration on the site itself, and that is a finding too.
Who this is for
Credit analysts, underwriters, property lawyers, due diligence teams, investment committees and ESG managers who need a factual basis they can document. Developers and architects use the same list as preparatory work for the ROS analysis in a planning case.
The checklist
| Point | What you are looking for | Where in Placepoint |
|---|---|---|
| The ownership chain | Who owns, through which companies | The Owners tab in the Property panel |
| Building cases | Unresolved orders, complaints, exemptions | Government cases |
| Encumbrances | Mortgages, easements, restrictions on disposal in Grunnboken | The Documents tab |
| Flooding | 20-, 200- and 1000-year floods, caution, events, protection | Risk |
| Ground conditions | Quick clay, marine clay, loose masses, landslides | Risk, Geology |
| Radon and pollution | Radon susceptibility, registered contaminated land | Risk, Pollution |
| Tenants | Who pays the rent, and for how long | The Tenants tab |
| Valuation | The property's own transactions against the neighbours' | The Transactions tab, Pricing Info |
| Energy | Energy Rating per building | The ESG tab |
You switch the map layers on from Map layer in the left-hand menu. See How to use map layers if you have not done this before.
Video: the risk layers on the map
The video adds Quick clay and Flood hazard map from the catalogue and shows one layer at a time with the switches in the Map layer panel. Two risk surfaces on top of each other are hard to read; the switch hides a layer without removing it.
Duration: 1 minute and 25 seconds. The whole collection is on Videos.
What rests on the property
Click the site, and the Property panel opens with the registered title holder and key figures at the top. The two tabs that carry the legal part of the risk picture are Owners and Government cases.
The Owners tab shows the owner at the top and the ownership structure level by level below, with the percentage share per level and foreign ownership where it is registered. For Nesgata 1 the landowner is Thon Hotellbygg AS, owned by Thon Eiendomsdrift AS, and at the top is Olav Thon Stiftelsen with 100%. If the registered title holder is a single-purpose company, it is this chain that tells you who your counterparty actually is, and a search on the organisation number shows the rest of their portfolio.
Government cases retrieves building cases, exemptions, complaints and orders from the kommune's archive, with the number of documents per case. Nesgata 1 has 17 cases, from a grease separator and road safety in the street to the detailed zoning plan for Norges Varemesse with 182 documents. Show for switches between this property and the surrounding area. An unresolved order or an unfinished complaint case is often the legal risk that delays a credit case most, and it is here, not in Grunnboken.
Encumbrances and the land register
Coming soon!
The Documents tab shows registered documents and the Grunnboken extract from Kartverket, with encumbrances, easements, restrictions on disposal and mortgages linked to the documents they come from. Until then you order the extract from Kartverket as before; see Land register and documents.
Flooding
Flooding is the point that most often decides whether a site can be built on, and in which safety class. Four layers in Risk answer that, in this order.
Flood hazard map holds the mapped flood zones from Norges vassdrags- og energidirektorat (NVE), with one sub-layer per return period: 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500 and 1000 years, and for the most recent mapping also the 200-year flood in 2100 with expected climate change. The image shows the 10-year flood, which is where the layer starts: flood-exposed area and low points in two blue hatchings along both banks of Nitelva. Switch on the 200-year flood in the sub-layers when the case concerns new development; that is the one most kommune plans refer to.
Caution surfaces, (regulated) water, dams is the nationwide caution map. It applies where no flood zone has been mapped, and is calculated from the terrain alone. If the site is hit by the caution surface but not the flood zone, it is the caution surface that applies until a specialist has assessed it away.
Flood areas, flood protection areas, and flood events adds the history. Where a flood zone says what can happen, an event says what has happened: the 1995 flood in eastern Norway is its own class in the layer, and the areas it covered around Lillestrøm lie as hatching over the map. The flood protection areas in the same layer show which return period a flood defence is dimensioned for.
Protection structures shows the structures NVE has registered. The flood defence of Lillestrøm is here as a line along the river bank, and that is the difference between a site in the flood zone with and without protection. A protection structure does not change the flood zone in the map, but it does change the assessment.
ℹ A flood zone and a caution surface are both modelled. They place the problem, but do not replace a hydrological assessment when the measure lies inside them.
Ground conditions
Ground conditions move the cost picture more than any other point on the list, and for a bank it is the question of whether the security stands on safe ground. The order is: does the site lie below the marine limit, is there mapped quick clay, and what does the loose masses map say.
Quick Clay – Caution shows the areas NVE considers may have quick clay, derived from the marine limit and the terrain. Quick clay alongside it shows the mapped hazard zones with risk class. Around Lillestrøm the caution areas follow the river course and the ravines, and they lie right up against the site. That means a geotechnical assessment is required before development, not that a landslide is likely, and a building that already stands there is not at risk for that reason.
Possibility of marine clay from Norges geologiske undersøkelse (NGU) grades the probability within the marine limit. It is this layer that explains why the quick clay caution lies where it does.
Loose masses shows the deposit type: river deposits, marine deposits, peat. For foundations this map is just as important as the quick clay map, and an existing borehole in NADAG a few tens of metres away is often what decides whether the geotechnical engineer has to go out to the site now or later.
Landslides gathers landslide events and the caution maps for rockfall, avalanche and debris and flood slides in one layer. The events are points with the landslide type; the caution surfaces are what fills the map around Lillestrøm, and the legend says which landslide type a surface applies to. A negative hit is just as documentable as a positive one: no event on the site belongs in the case.
ℹ A caution map is not a hazard zone. It says that the conditions may be present, not that they have been mapped and assessed. The maps here are early screening; design work requires a geotechnical report.
Radon and contaminated land
Radon susceptibility from NGU grades the radon potential by bedrock and loose masses in four classes. The area around Lillestrøm is Moderat til lav (moderate to low), with a belt marked Usikker (uncertain) along the river's old course. New homes must be radon-proofed under TEK17 § 13-5 in any case, so the map does not decide whether, but how thoroughly, and for rental a radon measurement in the building is what counts.
Contaminated land shows the sites Miljødirektoratet has registered, in four classes from Lite/ikke forurenset (little or no contamination) to Ikke akseptabel forurensning og behov for tiltak (unacceptable contamination requiring measures). North of the site, along Verkstedveien, there is a site with contamination acceptable for current use, and at Strømmen one where measures are needed. The site itself has no registration. The register is not complete: a site without a hit is not proven clean, and for older industrial and petrol station sites the contamination status should be verified independently of it.
Cultural heritage
Cultural heritage - Askeladden WMS from Riksantikvaren shows protected cultural heritage sites, safety zones and cultural environments. SEFRAK-registered buildings are a separate sub-layer that you switch on in addition. A SEFRAK building is not protected, but it triggers an assessment by the kommune before demolition or substantial change, and that is a time cost that belongs in the risk picture.
What the property carries
The financial part is read in the tabs, with one map layer that puts the figures in context.
The Tenants tab lists who is based at the address, with industry, employees and how long they have been there, taken from Brønnøysundregistrene. Nesgata 1 has one tenant, the hotel itself, with 167 employees. The whole rental income from one company is concentration risk in its purest form, and whether that is a problem is decided by the tenant's own figures, which the tab links on to.
The Transactions tab shows the property's own sales with date, type and sale price, and share transactions in a separate list. Nesgata 1 has three, the most recent in 2001 at NOK 40.2 million in an open-market sale. For a property that has not changed hands in over 20 years, they say little about today's value, and it is the map layer below that gives the reference for the loan-to-value ratio.
Property prices puts the neighbours' sales in the map, with price and date. That is the check on the estimate: what comparable properties within a few hundred metres have actually sold for. Analyze gives the same comparison as a table and chart for a selected area.
The ESG tab shows energy certificates and certifications per building, placed in the grid of Energy Rating against heating source. The hotel at Nesgata 1 has rating C from a certificate issued in 2010, and the tab itself says that a certificate older than ten years is no longer valid. For ESG reporting and green lending facilities, the Energy Rating from Enova is the key figure, and an out-of-date certificate is information too.
Putting it together
A credit case on Nesgata 1 looks like this after the round above:
| Category | Findings at Nesgata 1 | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Legal | Olav Thon Stiftelsen through two company levels; 17 cases, among them the detailed zoning plan for Norges Varemesse | Brønnøysundregistrene, the kommune's archive |
| Flooding | Mapped flood zone along Nitelva, flood event in 1995, flood protection registered | Norges vassdrags- og energidirektorat (NVE) |
| Ground conditions | Quick clay caution right up against the site, very high possibility of marine clay, no mapped hazard zone | NVE, Norges geologiske undersøkelse (NGU) |
| Radon and pollution | Moderate to low radon susceptibility, no registered contaminated land on the site | NGU, Miljødirektoratet |
| Financial | One tenant with 167 employees, most recent sale in 2001, Energy Rating C from an out-of-date certificate | Brønnøysundregistrene, Kartverket, Enova |
The screenshots from the map go straight into the case presentation, and Tags hold the properties in the portfolio that are to go through the same round. Reports with the figures gathered are coming in Reports.
After the screening
- Quick clay caution or marine clay on the site: order a geotechnical assessment before any measure, and check NADAG for boreholes that already exist.
- Inside a flood zone: read the kommune plan's provisions on safety class and on whether the protection structure has been taken as a basis.
- Registered contaminated land, or older industrial use without registration: check the site in Miljødirektoratet's ground contamination database.
- Renting out a home: radon measurement in the building, regardless of what the caution map says.
- Unresolved order or complaint case in Government cases: get the case documents from the kommune before the case moves on.
Related areas
- Understand a property and its context for the lookup that comes before the risk assessment.
- Feasibility study when the question is what the site can take, not only what threatens it.
- Analyse value and potential for the valuation analysis that runs in parallel.
- Manage and monitor a portfolio to run the same round on a whole portfolio.