Find out how Rezown could help you.

One search tells you which buildings near you can legally become flats, what they would be worth once converted, and who to ring about buying one. That is the short version. Below is everything the platform does, grouped by what you are trying to work out at the time.

Finding buildings Planning and eligibility Deal evaluation Ownership and approach Risk and buildability Shortlists and workflow Data and provenance

Finding buildings

Get from a postcode to a list worth reading.

Type a postcode, get back every commercial building around it that could plausibly become housing. Then start cutting. The filters run before the results are capped, so tightening your criteria brings up buildings you had not seen rather than shortening the same page, which is not true of every tool that offers you a filter panel.

Postcode or district search: A full postcode (EC1A 1BB) or just the district (EC1A). District mode ignores the radius and confines results to that outcode, which is how most developers describe the area they cover.
Radius from 0.1 to 25 miles: Tight enough for one high street, wide enough for a county corridor.
16 commercial property types: Offices, shops, banks, salons, kiosks, showrooms, retail warehouses, restaurants, cafés, workshops, business units, surgeries, health centres, day nurseries and gyms. All of them Class E, which is what Class MA needs.
Floor area and rateable value ranges: Set a floor, a ceiling, or both. Floor area comes from the VOA summary valuations and is present on 98% of the index.
Whole buildings only: Roughly six in ten rating records in a city centre are a floor or a part unit rather than a building. One toggle hides them so your list is buildings you could actually buy.
Possibly vacant: The occupier name on the rating record is blank, which often means nobody is in it. It is a proxy rather than lease data, and the product says so on the toggle.
Map and list side by side: Up to the 1,000 nearest matches, mapped as green, amber and red pins by how many constraints they carry. Click a pin and the card opens.
Eight ways to sort: Distance, floor area, rateable value, value per square metre, Class MA score, estimated margin or estimated residual land value, ascending or descending.
Plain English search, typed or spoken: "Offices over 8,000 sqft in Reading with no planning constraints" sets the filters for you, and shows you which ones it set so you can correct it.

Filters412 of 1,000

“offices over 8,000 sqft in Reading with no planning constraints”

Use typeClass E

Floor areaOver 8,000 sqft

TenureFreehold preferred

ConstraintsNone or verify only

Min residual land value£400,000

Whole buildings onlyYes

Possibly vacantInclude

Sorted by residual3 mile radius

Sample data, shown to illustrate the interface.

Search · RG1 · 3 mile radius412 results

The Old Print Works, Bridge Street

0.3 mi

Class EOffices and premises78 /100

12,270 sqftRV £86,000Shallow plan

~34% marginRLV ~£1.5mest.

Bridge Street Estates Ltd

Conservation Area

Unit 4, Kennet Business Park

0.7 mi

Class EBusiness unit and premises71 /100

9,257 sqftRV £61,500

~28% marginRLV ~£840kest.

Kennet Holdings Ltd

15 Market Place

0.4 mi

Class EShop and premisesMA excluded

5,813 sqftRV £44,250

Market Place Trustees Ltd

ListedConservation Area

Chatham House, Oxford Road

1.1 mi

Class EOffices and premises54 /100

24,865 sqftRV £198,000BSR >18m

−23% marginRLV −£366kest.

Oxford Road Property Co Ltd

Article 4

No constraints

One to check

Several

Sample data, shown to illustrate the interface. The live platform runs on official records from the Valuation Office Agency, HM Land Registry and Companies House.

Planning and eligibility

Know what the rules allow before you view anything.

Class MA is where a commercial-to-residential scheme lives or dies, and most of the answer is already sitting in public record waiting to be joined up. Rezown applies the law as a gate first, then scores only what gets through. That order matters. An exclusion is a fact and a score is an opinion, and we do not dress one up as the other.

A Class MA verdict on every property: Eligible, worth checking, excluded, or the wrong use class to begin with. The reason travels with the verdict, so you are never told no without being told why.
Article 4 directions (6,852 areas): Flagged rather than blocked. Only a small share of Article 4 directions actually bite on Class MA, so Rezown tells you to check the wording instead of quietly deleting the building from your list.
Conservation areas (6,585): Not an exclusion under Class MA, and we do not pretend otherwise. It is shown because it shapes the prior approval, particularly at ground floor.
Listed buildings (118,059): A hard exclusion, applied automatically.
Statutory exclusions: Scheduled monuments (20,148), sites of special scientific interest, world heritage sites, areas of outstanding natural beauty and national parks. All of them rule Class MA out, and all of them are screened before you ever see the result.
Constraint filters, three ways: Ignore a constraint, exclude anything carrying it, or look only at what carries it. Plus a single button for buildings with nothing against them at all.
A suitability score you can take apart: Floor area, unit yield, tenure and rateable value push it up; conservation frontage, contamination history, loss of a nursery or surgery and the 18 metre threshold pull it down. Every contribution is listed. Buildings the rules exclude carry no score, so nothing unconvertible can outrank something real.
The prior approval checklist: Eight matters pre-filled from the data: flooding, noise, contamination, natural light, transport and highways, fire safety, conservation area impact and space standards. The 56-day clock and the two-year prior-use test are noted alongside.
A link into the council’s own register: A condition on an earlier consent can remove permitted development rights, and no national dataset records it. So every verdict carries that caveat and a deep link into the local authority planning search, rather than a false all-clear.

Class MA eligibilityThe Old Print Works

78/100EligibleClass E use, not listed, no Article 4 direction covering this address.

Base50

Floor area in the viable band+18

Unit yield+9

Freehold title+12

Conservation area, ground floor−3

Excluded buildings carry no score at all, so nothing that cannot be converted can outrank something that can.

Sample data, shown to illustrate the interface.

Deal evaluation

See whether the numbers work before you commit.

Every building on the list arrives with an appraisal already run, built from what flats actually sold for down that road rather than a rule of thumb. Change any assumption in it and the residual land value moves while you type. The best moment is often the unflattering one, when the building you had got excited about turns out not to pay for itself and you get your fortnight back.

Residual land value on every result: What the building is worth to you before your profit starts eroding. Not a range or a rating, a number.
Unit yield: Floor area, net of an efficiency assumption, divided by your average unit size. Change either and the count moves.
Sale values from actual sales: Land Registry Price Paid gives the median flat price in the outcode; floor areas from the EPC register turn that into a pound per square foot. 284 outcodes are covered so far. It is a local median, not a valuation of your scheme.
Every assumption is yours: Efficiency, average unit size, build cost per square metre, professional fees, contingency, finance and developer profit. Edit any of them and the residual moves while you watch.
Margin measured three ways: Development margin before land and profit, margin on gross development value, and profit on cost against the 17.5 to 20 per cent lenders tend to want. Profit per unit as well, because that is the number people actually argue about.
Sensitivity grid: Build cost ten per cent either way against sale values five per cent either way. If the deal only survives in one corner of that grid, you have learned something.
The VAT position, noted: Conversion works are usually five per cent and the first sale of the new dwellings is zero-rated. Easy to forget and worth a lot on a nine-flat scheme.
Search by outcome, not just by building: Set a minimum margin or a minimum residual land value and Rezown filters the whole result set against it, then sorts by whichever you care about.
Deals that do not work are shown not working: A building that comes out at minus £366,000 appears as minus £366,000. Killing something on a Tuesday morning is cheaper than killing it in week ten.
Your assumptions, saved: Set them once and every search, every panel and every export uses them.

Appraisal · The Old Print Works18 units

Residual land value

£1,500,000

Max to pay for the building before profit erodes

Gross development value£5,940,000

Build cost− £2,754,000

Fees, finance, contingency− £617,000

Developer profit− £1,069,000

Residual land value£1,500,000

Sale values from Land Registry flat sales in this outcode, sized with EPC floor areas.

Sample data, shown to illustrate the interface.

SensitivityResidual land value

GDV −5%GDVGDV +5%Build −10%£1.34m£1.62m£1.90mBuild£1.22m£1.50m£1.78mBuild +10%£1.09m£1.37m£1.65m

Build cost moves ten per cent either way, sale values five. If the deal only works in the top corner, it does not work.

Sample data, shown to illustrate the interface.

Ownership and approach

Find the owner, and the person who actually decides.

Getting to the freeholder is the difference between an off-market conversation and queuing behind five other buyers. It is also the part most tools quietly fudge: no single key links a business rates record to a Land Registry title, so every match is a judgement, and a bad one hands you the building next door. Rezown grades its own working and shows you every title registered at the address, so you can see what it based the answer on.

The registered proprietor: Company name, title number, freehold or leasehold, and the price paid where the register records it. 4.4m corporate and overseas titles are linked into the index.
A confidence grade on every match: Joining a rating record to a Land Registry title is fuzzy work, and getting it wrong means showing you the building next door’s owner. Rezown checks the building number on both sides and grades the match confident, probable or weak. You can filter to confident only.
The whole ownership stack: Every corporate title at the postcode, split into freehold and leasehold. When no company holds the freehold, the panel says so plainly instead of promoting a leaseholder to owner.
The company behind the title: Companies House number, status, registered office and SIC codes, pulled live rather than from a stale copy.
Directors, on demand: Names, roles and appointment dates for the current board, with a LinkedIn search that includes the company name so you get the right Margaret Halloran.
What else that owner holds: One click expands the company’s other titles. A landlord with eleven buildings is a different conversation from one with a single shop.
Public owners flagged: Councils, central government and statutory bodies are marked and can be excluded in one toggle, because they rarely sell on the timescale you need. Universities and housing associations are deliberately not flagged, since they do transact.
Overseas owners, honestly labelled: Properties held by non-UK companies are marked as such. Companies House cannot enrich them, so you get the registered office and nothing more, and the product does not pretend the trail goes further.
Copy what you need: Property address and registered office to the clipboard, one button each.
A verified route to the decision makerComing: Resolving the named director to a working contact, so an approach lands with the person who can say yes. Built, and held back until the data licensing position on that specific use is settled in writing. We would rather be late than casual about it.

OwnershipFreehold

Registered proprietorBridge Street Estates Ltd

TenureFreehold

Company number07734921

Title numberBK418209

Registered office12 Castle Street,
Reading RG1 7SB

Directors

MHMargaret HalloranDirector · appointed 2014LinkedIn

DPDaniel PriceDirector · appointed 2019LinkedIn

Sample data, shown to illustrate the interface.

Ownership at this postcode3 corporate titles

Confident matchBuilding number agrees with the title

FreeholdBridge Street Estates Ltd

BK418209 · whole building

LeaseholdHalloran Dental Practice Ltd

BK502771 · ground floor

LeaseholdKestrel Media Ltd

BK511864 · second floor

Where no company holds the freehold, Rezown says so rather than presenting a leaseholder as the owner.

Sample data, shown to illustrate the interface.

Risk and buildability

Catch the things that kill conversions late.

Deep floorplates. Flood zones. A nightclub two doors down, a landfill under the car park. None of these stop you buying a building and every one of them can stop the scheme, usually around week ten with the survey money already gone. Each check below runs against every result before you have so much as picked up the phone.

Plan depth and daylight: Ordnance Survey building footprints, buffered inwards, give a shallow, medium or deep band and a minimum width in metres. A deep floorplate means a dark core, which means fewer saleable flats than the floor area suggests.
The 18 metre threshold: Above it a building falls under the Building Safety Regulator, which in 2025 meant Gateway waits of 22 weeks and more. Flagged, with that context attached, and filterable.
Flood zones 2 and 3: Environment Agency flood mapping, checked against the building rather than the borough.
Road and rail noise: Defra’s strategic noise mapping is sampled at the building itself and banded from 60 dB upwards. Noise is one of the seven prior approval matters, so a 70 dB reading is the case you will have to answer at committee.
Noisy neighbours: Pubs, clubs, late-night food and industrial premises within 100 metres, counted from the same rating list. In central London a pub within 100 metres is common, so treat it as a prompt rather than a verdict.
Contamination signals: Historic landfill within 250 metres from the Environment Agency’s 19,806 recorded sites, petrol stations, vehicle repair and dry cleaning nearby, and the building’s own light industrial history. A Phase 1 desk study is still the floor, and the checklist says so.
Transport access: Distance to the nearest of 10,469 rail, tube and tram stations, and how many of 350,000+ bus stops sit within 400 metres.
Street View and map: A photograph of the frontage in the panel, clickable through to the full Street View. Sometimes the building answers the question on its own.
Where the pin really is: About nine per cent of properties are pinned to the building itself, via an EPC to UPRN match. The rest sit on the postcode centroid, and every panel tells you which you are looking at rather than implying survey accuracy.

Prior approval checklist7 matters

FloodingOutside Environment Agency flood zones 2 and 3.

Noise from commercial premisesOne pub within 100m. Road noise band 60 to 64 dB.

ContaminationFormer industrial use on site. Phase 1 desk study advised.

Natural lightShallow plan, 14m minimum width. Core can be lit.

Transport and highwaysStation 340m. 12 bus stops within 400m.

Fire safetyUnder 18m, so outside the Building Safety Regulator gateway.

Conservation area impactGround floor frontage will need care. Not an exclusion.

Sample data, shown to illustrate the interface.

Shortlists and workflow

Keep hold of what you found.

Sourcing runs over months, not afternoons. Rezown holds on to your searches, your shortlist and the assumptions you set, so the afternoon you spent on it in March is still worth something in June rather than a browser tab you closed.

A shortlist that remembers: Save a property and Rezown keeps the analysis as it stood that day. Mark it active, under review or archived as it moves.
Full analysis view: Any property opens into a full-page view: appraisal, eligibility, checklist, ownership, portfolio and imagery in one place, from the search or from your shortlist.
Saved searches: Every filter, radius and assumption stored under a name and re-run in one click.
Search history: Your last fifty searches, so the one you ran on Thursday is not lost.
CSV export: The whole result set, up to 1,000 rows, with every field including owner, confidence grade, constraints, risk signals and appraisal outputs. Yours to take into a spreadsheet or a lender pack.
Preferences set once: Where you look, what you look for and your appraisal defaults, captured in a short first-run walkthrough and applied everywhere afterwards.
Alerts on a saved searchComing: An email when something new matches a search you have saved. Built and waiting on one piece of plumbing.

Saved properties3 shortlisted

The Old Print WorksUnder review

RLV ~£1.5m · owner contacted

Unit 4, Kennet Business ParkActive

RLV ~£840k · awaiting title

Chatham HouseArchived

RLV −£366k · does not stack

Each saved property keeps the analysis as it stood the day you saved it, so you can see what you were looking at when you made the call.

Sample data, shown to illustrate the interface.

Data and provenance

Every figure traces back to a register.

Rezown is built on the official sources and nothing else. No scraped listings, no resold third-party database, no agent feed. Each dataset carries the date it was last refreshed, shown in the product next to the figures it produced, so you can judge how current a number is instead of taking it on trust.

Valuation Office AgencyHM Land RegistryCompanies Houseplanning.data.gov.ukEnvironment AgencyOrdnance Survey

What we hold today

270,000+ Class E commercial properties in the search index, 4.4m corporate and overseas ownership titles, and the national planning constraint layers. Coverage is London, Manchester, Birmingham and the Surrey, Berkshire and north Hampshire corridor. The rest of England and Wales follows.

What it will not do

It is a research tool. Figures are indicative, most locations are accurate to the postcode rather than the doorstep, and lease lengths are not in any dataset we can reach at a sane price. It will sharpen your questions and shorten your list. It will not replace a planning consultant, a measured survey or your solicitor.

See a worked example, start to finish

See it run on an area you know well.

Give us a postcode you know inside out and we will run it live, so you can judge the results against what you already know is there. Or leave your details and we will tell you the day it opens.

Book a demo