Before The Hammer

The brief

Property auction legal packs are dense — leases, ground rents, restrictive covenants, planning history — and getting them reviewed by a solicitor typically costs £200–£500 per pack and takes days. For an active investor reviewing five or ten properties a week, that's a non-starter. The Before The Hammer team needed a product that could parse the same documents in minutes, surface the deal-breakers in plain English, and price for how investors actually buy — per-pack and on subscription.

The approach

1. 01

   AI document pipeline that handles the mess of real legal packs — mixed PDFs, scanned images, Word documents, and ZIP archives in one upload, with text extraction working even on poor-quality scans.

2. 02

   Green/Amber/Red risk reports. Investors don't want a 30-page essay, they want a verdict. The colour-coded format means a quick scroll tells you whether to bid before you even open the detail.

3. 03

   A full suite of integrated calculators around the core review — stamp duty, mortgage stress test, BRR (Buy-Refurbish-Refinance-Rent), HMO viability, GDV and profit analysis — so investors stop juggling six spreadsheets.

4. 04

   Portfolio dashboard with CSV export, plus automated compliance reminders for EPC, gas safety and EICR renewals across every property a user owns.

5. 05

   Pricing that matches usage — £39.99 for a one-off pack, £29.99/month for unlimited reviews plus all the tools. Built-in Stripe billing, full subscription flow.