Report: Due diligence
The due diligence report will become part of Placepoint Fusion. The report itself is not finished, but everything it builds on is available today: legal title, encumbrances, the ownership chain, tenants, plan, building cases and natural hazards. This page goes through a Norwegian property DD track by track and shows where in Placepoint each point is answered.
The report is coming, the basis is here
The report gathers the register-based basis for a due diligence in one document, from the property you have open in the Property panel. Until it is ready, you do the round below yourself, tab by tab and map layer by map layer, or you let Placepoint AI put it together. It is the same data in all three cases; the difference is who writes the document.
The tracks below are the same ones a DD has always consisted of. What is new is how much of them can be done before the data room opens. Legal title, encumbrances, the ownership chain, tenants, plan, building cases and natural hazards are all register information, and they are in the console from the first click on the property. The leases, the accounts behind the figures and the physical condition of the building are still in the data room and on the inspection, and this page says so too, track by track.
See also: Understand property on placepoint.no.
Share purchase or asset purchase
The structure of a DD is governed by whether the transaction is a share purchase or an asset purchase. In commercial property, the share purchase is the norm: the property sits in a single purpose company, and it is the shares in the company that change hands. The company and tax tracks then come in addition to the pure property track, and the document duty of 2.5% is not triggered. In an asset purchase the property is transferred with a deed, the document duty falls due, and the company track falls away.
The Owners tab in the Property panel tells you which of the two you are in. If the registered owner is a limited company with a single level above it before a holding company, it is a single purpose company. The Properties tab in the Company panel confirms it: if only this property is listed there, the company is empty apart from it. The Transactions tab shows the share transactions alongside the registered ones, so a change of ownership that never went through Grunnboken is visible too.
Who this is for
Buyer, seller, bank and the advisers on each side: the transaction lawyer who owns the legal track, the technical adviser, and the financial one who has to reconcile against the buyer's model. Sellers use the same round for a vendor due diligence before the property is listed, so the findings do not come as a surprise in the bidding round.
The data basis is the same wherever in the country the property lies: 3.5 million matrikkelenheter, more than 14 million registered owners and rights holders, 1.1 million active companies and more than 20 million journalled documents from more than 330 municipalities. See Placepoint in numbers for the full overview.
The checklist
| Track | What you look for | Where in Placepoint |
|---|---|---|
| Legal | Legal title, encumbrances, mortgages, easements, rights of way, leasehold | Property panel, the Land registers button, Leasehold land |
| Company | Ownership chain, beneficial owners, roles, shareholders, accounts | Company panel |
| Technical | Built year, building status, completion certificate, energy label, TEK | Building panel, Case access |
| Commercial | Tenants, concentration, solidity, area per unit | The Tenants tab, Units under the Property tab, Company panel |
| Plan and zoning | Purpose, utilisation, plan proposals, consideration zones, sequencing requirements | The Zoning tab, Zoning |
| Environment and risk | Contaminated land, quick clay, flooding, landslides, radon, storm surge | Risk, Geology, Pollution |
| Tax and financial | Sales history, share sale versus deed, comparable sales | The Transactions tab, Property prices, Analysis |
The map layers are turned on from Map layer in the left-hand menu. See How to use map layers if you have not done it before.
Legal
The legal track starts with title and the Grunnboken extract: who is listed as the registered owner, and what rests on the property in the form of mortgages, easements, rights of way and leasehold arrangements. Then neighbour law matters, ongoing disputes and public law orders.
The registered owner is shown at the top of the Property panel and in the Owners tab, per matrikkelenhet. A property with several land parcels or sections is reviewed unit by unit, and the Property tab shows the hierarchy between them. Leasehold land in the map shows whether the plot, or part of it, is leased from another landowner. That is a separate chapter in the purchase contract.
You order the extract itself from Land registers at the top of the panel: a current or historic Grunnboken extract from Kartverket, delivered digitally in seconds. The extract is the source for mortgages with amount and priority, easements with document number, restrictions on disposal and pre-emption rights. It is the document the transaction lawyer puts in the appendix. What you get and do not get is set out in Land register and documents. If you integrate with your own system, Placepoint API: Encumbrances gives you the same encumbrances in registration order in a single call.
Orders, appeal cases and neighbour notices are not in Grunnboken. They are in the municipality's journal, and Case access retrieves them: each case with date, title and the documents behind it, for this property or for the neighbourhood. An unresolved order or an appeal case that has not been closed is often the legal finding that delays a closing the most, and it is here.
Statutory liens for municipal charges and unpaid shared costs are not registered, and appear neither in the extract nor in the panel. That is checked against the municipality and the property manager.
In a share purchase: the company
In a share purchase the company comes with it, and with it the incorporation documents, the share register, board resolutions, group contributions, loan agreements with change of control clauses, guarantees and intra-group agreements. The documents are in the data room. The register part of the same track is in the Company panel.
The Ownership tab shows beneficial owners, the shareholders per financial year from the shareholder register, the ownership tree upwards and the group structure. The Roles tab gives the board, the general manager, signing rights and power of procuration from Brønnøysundregistrene, with a link on to each person's other roles. That is the check for conflicts of interest. The Info tab has the legal form, the date of incorporation and the status, and a company in liquidation or with negative equity is a finding in itself.
Technical
Technical DD is a building condition assessment, often to NS 3424, with the maintenance backlog estimated in kroner over one, five and ten years: building parts, roof, facade, technical installations, lifts, fire safety concept and fire documentation, universal design, energy label and upgrade needs against the EPBD requirements. That calls for an inspection. The register part of the track is nevertheless not small, and it determines what the qualified surveyor should look for.
The completion certificate is the classic finding: a missing completion certificate is one of the most frequent red flags in a DD. Building statuses in the Building panel is the timeline from the framework permit via the permit to start work and the temporary use permit to the completion certificate, per building and per extension, with the date for each status. If the building runs on a temporary use permit, the case behind it is in Case access, and the same goes for changes of use and dispensations that have to match today's use. For older buildings often only first use is registered, and then the journal is what you have.
The ESG tab gives the energy certificate from Enova with its grade, heating grade and issue date, and which technical building regulations the building falls under. A certificate older than ten years is no longer valid, and the tab says so itself; for a building that has to meet the EPBD requirements the outdated grade is information too. Building age and TEK17 together tell you which rules the building was designed to, and therefore what realistically sits in the maintenance backlog.
Condition to NS 3424, asbestos, the fire safety concept and lift documentation are not in any register. The report tells you which buildings and which dates the qualified surveyor should take with them, it does not replace the inspection.
Commercial
The commercial track is the lease review against the rent roll: rent level, CPI adjustment, term, options, protection against termination, allocation of shared costs, deposit or guarantees, exit clauses. The key figures are WAULT, vacancy, tenant concentration and the credit assessment of the largest tenants. The contracts are in the data room. Who the tenants are, and what they can bear, is in the console.
The Tenants tab lists each company at the address with its organisation number, age, number of employees, legal entity type and NACE industry. It is all taken from Brønnøysundregistrene. One tenant with all the income is concentration risk in its purest form, and five tenants in the same industry is the same risk in another guise. Historic tenants are in a separate list, and an address many have moved away from is a question for the seller. The fields in detail are set out in Units and Tenants.
Click the tenant, and the Financials tab in the Company panel gives the accounts year by year: revenue, EBITDA, EBIT, profit for the year, equity and liabilities, with the annual accounts linked below. That is the credit assessment of the largest tenants, without ordering anything. The Ownership tab tells you whether the tenant is part of a group that could stand behind a rent guarantee.
Units, which sits under the Property tab, gives UFA per unit from Matrikkelen. That is the check on the area in the contracts: a deviation of five to ten per cent is common in older data, a larger deviation should be explained before it is priced. If the area in the contract is larger than what is registered, it is the tenant who pays too much, and it ends up as a claim.
The tenant list is built on registered business addresses, and picks up companies, rarely private residential tenants. Rent level, term and options are not in any public register; the contracts in the data room give those, and you get the counterparties from us.
Plan and zoning
The plan track is the current zoning plan and land use purpose, the utilisation ratio, building limits, planning provisions, ongoing planning work in the area, sequencing requirements and infrastructure contributions. It is the track that determines the development potential, and where the value driver often lies in a transaction with a conversion thesis.
The Zoning tab in the Property panel shows the municipality plan and the zoning plan with the purpose and a link to the plan document at the municipality, and lays the plan boundaries over the map so you see which sub-areas the property touches. The provisions are in the plan document, not in the map: the utilisation ratio, heights, parking requirements and sequencing requirements. If both plan levels apply, the zoning plan governs; if it is old, it is the land use element of the municipality plan that tells you where the municipality wants to go.
| Map layer | Answers |
|---|---|
| Zoning Plans | Current purpose and plan boundaries, on the neighbouring plots too |
| Municipal plans | Overall purpose, and consideration zones for hazard, noise and conservation |
| Regulation plan proposals | Plan proposals under consideration that could change the assumptions |
| Cultural heritage - Askeladden WMS | Protection and SEFRAK registration that limits what can be done with the building |
| Building Limits from the Road's Center Line | How much of the plot can be built on towards the road |
| Shoreline management zone, Marka boundary | Building bans that override the plan |
What most often decides the timeline is not the purpose, but a plan requirement. A provision in the municipality plan can say that an area must be included in a zoning plan before work can start, and the buyer then has to go through a private detailed zoning plan before a building application can be considered at all, whatever is to be built. The requirement is in the provisions, not in the plan map, and that is why the plan document is read in full rather than just the colour of the surface. The same applies to the building limit towards the road, the building ban in the 100-metre belt along the sea and the requirement for a buffer zone towards neighbours.
A temporary ban on development is the other finding that stops a timeline, and it is in the decision, not in the plan map. Case access with Show for set to the neighbourhood shows planning initiatives and plan proposals in the area, and what the municipality has recently accepted on a neighbouring plot.
Environment and risk
The environmental track covers contaminated land, ground conditions and quick clay, asbestos and environmental surveys in refurbishment, radon, flood and landslide zones, and climate risk in line with the requirements the EU taxonomy and the reporting rules place on institutional buyers. Everything apart from asbestos and environmental surveys is a map layer.
The sweep is done on the matrikkelenhet and a belt around it. A protected cultural heritage site, a quick clay zone or a registered location a hundred metres away does not hit the building, but it does hit the planning work, and a review that only looks at the land parcel itself reports "no findings" on something that comes back in the first consultation round.
| Map layer | Answers |
|---|---|
| Contaminated land, Soil Contamination – Areas | Registered sites from Miljødirektoratet on and around the plot |
| Quick clay, Quick Clay – Caution | Mapped hazard zones and areas that require assessment |
| Possibility of marine clay, Loose masses | Whether marine clay is possible, and what the ground consists of |
| Landslides | Caution for earth, flood and rock slides |
| Flood hazard map, Caution surfaces, (regulated) water, dams | Mapped flood zones and calculated extent |
| Flood areas, flood protection areas, and flood events, Protection structures | What has actually happened, and what has been built against it |
| High tide / storm surge | Storm surge and sea level for properties by the sea |
| Radon susceptibility | Probability of radon in the ground |
| EU-Taxonomy-Buildings | The building's position against the taxonomy criteria |
The maps come from Norges vassdrags- og energidirektorat (NVE), Norges geologiske undersøkelse (NGU) and Miljødirektoratet. The Expired list under Building in the Property panel belongs to the same track: a former industrial or petrol station building on the plot is a finding about contaminated land, even when the register is empty.
The whole round through the risk layers, with an example on one property, is set out in Assess risk. Report: Risk is the same review as a separate document, and Report: ESG and sustainability takes the climate risk further.
A caution map is not a hazard zone. It says that the conditions may be present, not that they have been mapped and assessed, and it is that difference that decides whether the finding should be priced or investigated.
Tax and financial
The tax track is the tax written-down value and the latent tax on the property, which in a share purchase is normally priced in with a discount of seven to twelve per cent of the difference between market value and tax value. Value added tax: adjustment obligations, voluntary registration and the share of letting to VAT-liable tenants. Document duty of 2.5% in an asset purchase, not in a share purchase. In addition, normalised cash flow, property tax and reconciliation against the buyer's own model.
The written-down value, the latent tax and the value added tax come from the seller's accounts and the data room. What the track gets from the console is the history and the reference.
The Transactions tab shows the property's own sales with date, type and price where it is public, and the share transactions in a separate list. Only Free Sale gives a price indication; Arv (inheritance), Skifte (estate settlement) and Seksjonering (sectioning) are transfers without a market price. The date of the last registered acquisition is what the track needs to calculate what sits in the tax written-down value, and a property that last went through Grunnboken 20 years ago carries a very different latent tax from one that was bought last year. The price history is also read against the plan situation: a plot that last sold for less than the time before is usually undeveloped raw land without a zoning plan, not a falling market.
Property prices puts the neighbours' sales on the map with price and date, and Analysis gives the same comparison as a table and a chart for a selected area. That is the check on the value the seller is basing the price on. The property tax is set out in the municipality's valuation, and Real Estate Transactions in the Media shows what comparable properties in the area have been reported sold for.
The report itself
The format is exception-based, not descriptive. A summary with the material findings comes first. Then comes a findings log per track, where each finding is classified by risk and probability, quantified in kroner where that is possible, and linked to a recommended treatment. A track with no findings gets one line saying that it has been reviewed, and what was read.
| Part | Content |
|---|---|
| Cover | The property, owner, area and date, with the three key figures the case stands or falls on |
| Summary | The main findings in bullet form, sorted by consequence, and a recommendation that answers the question the assignment asked |
| Property facts | Matrikkel, address, area, land parcels, buildings and sectioning, and what is not registered on the property |
| Ownership chain | The companies level by level with their share, and the key figures per level |
| Findings log per track | Finding, risk, probability, amount where it can be quantified, and recommended treatment |
| Themes with no findings | What has been checked without a hit, with what was read |
| Treatment | Price reduction, a specific warranty or indemnity in the purchase contract, retention of part of the purchase price, or a deferred closing until a condition is met |
| Next steps | The concrete orders: geotechnical assessment, start-up meeting with the municipality, clarification of mortgages |
| Source and date | Per item, with a link to the tab or map layer the finding came from |
| Not investigated | Leases, accounts, technical condition and value added tax |
Three of the rows do most of the work. Themes with no findings is the one that separates "no risk" from "not investigated", and without it no one can see the difference. Source and date per item is the point of generating the report from the registers: each finding points back to the Grunnboken extract, the case in the journal or the map layer it came from. And the list of what has not been investigated is the scope limitation, where the buyer's own advisers should start. The report says itself that it is not a legal assessment, and that it does not replace a formal process or a report from a qualified expert.
Create the report today with Placepoint AI
Placepoint AI has access to the same sources as the tabs and map layers above, and writes the document from a single prompt. An example of an eleven-page DD report, with legal, technical and financial screening and its own marking of what is covered, is on Examples and tips. The prompt does not need to be longer than this:
Create a due diligence report for [cadastral number or address]. Go through
legal title and encumbrances from Grunnboken, the ownership chain up to the
beneficial owners, tenants with accounts, the current plan and plan proposals,
building cases with completion certificates, and natural hazards. Classify each
finding by risk and suggest a treatment. Mark clearly what is not covered by
the registers.
If the answer is going into your own template, ask for a table instead of a PDF, one row per finding: track, finding, source, date, treatment. The standard instructions for banks and for investors on the same page prioritise encumbrances and mortgages first and ask for "not covered by the register" where the coverage is missing, which is the same rule the report follows.
If you are in the map, the Agent does the short lookup without switching tools: "Retrieve the Grunnboken extract for this property and summarise the encumbrances" gives mortgages, easements and rights of way as text with links. The map moves to where the case is.
Related surfaces
- Property panel - the tabs the report reads, one property at a time.
- Company panel - the ownership chain, roles and accounts for the company behind it.
- Case access - building cases, orders and plan proposals from the municipality's journal.
- Assess risk - the environment and risk track reviewed on one property.
- Report: Ownership structure and legal title - the ownership chain on its own, in depth.
- Report: Tenants - the tenant picture for a whole portfolio.
- Placepoint API: Encumbrances - the encumbrances in registration order, one call.
Data sources
- Grunnboken and Matrikkelen via Kartverket.
- Brønnøysundregistrene (companies, roles, tenants) and the shareholder register at Skatteetaten.
- Municipal planning registers and postal journals, with coverage in Coverage Map Case Access.
- Enova (energy certificates).
- Norges vassdrags- og energidirektorat (NVE), Norges geologiske undersøkelse (NGU) and Miljødirektoratet (natural hazards, ground conditions, pollution).
- Riksantikvaren (cultural heritage).