Viewing trips and investment tours: how they are actually built

An organised viewing trip — flights and hotel discounted or free, a programme of properties, a consultant throughout — is a sales instrument with a well-understood structure. It can be genuinely useful, provided you know which parts are the product.

How the trip is constructed

• The cost is recovered in the commission on a purchase. That is not hidden and it is not sinister; it does mean the trip is designed to produce one.
• The itinerary is curated. You will see properties the organiser earns on, in an order designed to make the target property look correct: something overpriced, something flawed, then the one.
• Time is filled. A dense schedule removes the hours in which you would wander a neighbourhood alone or meet someone independent.
• Reciprocity is created. Hospitality generates obligation, which is the oldest sales mechanism there is and works on people who know it works.
• A deadline appears. A reservation price valid until the end of the trip, an allocation, a launch.

How to use one anyway

• Go, and pay your own way where you can. It costs less than the negotiating position it buys.
• Add two days at the start or end with no programme. Walk the districts, at rush hour and at night.
• Book your own meetings: an independent lawyer, a mortgage broker, a letting agent who does not sell. An hour with a letting agent tells you more about achievable rent than any projection.
• See at least one property the organiser does not earn on, through a different agency.
• Refuse to sign anything during the trip. This is the single rule. Nothing offered on a viewing trip is unavailable a fortnight later, and anything genuinely unavailable a fortnight later was not an investment decision.

What a good organiser looks like

Discloses the commission arrangement without being asked, shows properties from more than one developer, introduces you to independent professionals, and does not object to you extending the trip alone. Organisers who do all four exist, and the trip with them is worth taking.