By the time most people call me about a property, the papers are signed. The consultation is still worth having, but the range of what I can suggest has narrowed a great deal.
Shape and slope come first
A regular rectangle or square is the straightforward case. Plots with a cut corner, particularly in the north-east, are the ones I ask people to think hardest about, because that is the correction you cannot make later without buying land you do not own.
Slope matters and is easy to check on a walk around. Ground falling towards the north or the east is favourable. Ground rising there, with the low point in the south-west, is the arrangement I would want a good reason to accept.
The roads around it
Which sides the plot is approached from changes what can be built and where the entrance can sensibly go. A corner plot opens options; a plot with a single approach from an awkward direction closes several before you have drawn anything.
This is worth checking against a plan rather than from memory of a site visit, because people routinely misremember which way they were facing.
What the chart adds at this stage
A property purchase is a large commitment made at a particular moment, and the chart speaks to the moment rather than the plot. It will not tell you whether the land is good. It can tell you whether this is a period in which you are likely to be making a clear-headed large decision or a pressured one.
In practice I have used this more often to slow a purchase down by a few months than to stop one.
When to walk away
Rarely, and I try to say it plainly when I mean it. A north-east cut combined with an unfavourable slope and an approach that forces the entrance into a difficult direction is a stack of problems where each one makes the others harder to offset.
Where the issues are individually manageable, they are usually worth managing. Where they compound, and where the buyer will be stretched financially on top of it, I will say that the next plot is likely to be a better purchase.
What skipping this costs
Not much, if the property turns out to be sound. If it does not, the difference between knowing at the offer stage and knowing after possession is the difference between choosing a different plot and living with a compromise for twenty years.
Priya Swaroop Tripathi
Founder & Consultant
Want this looked at for your own chart or home?
A consultation starts with your date of birth, your name as people use it, and (for Vastu) a floor plan with the directions marked.
