Local area guides for new homes developments
The local knowledge a good sales advisor takes two years to build, researched and written down in four weeks. On the desk during a viewing, in the buyer's hands after it, and ready for whoever covers the site next week.
Some housebuilders call it a site bible. Ours is the one you can hand to a customer.
One document, three jobs
“What are the schools actually like?” is the question every advisor gets and nobody wants to answer from memory. This gives you the name, the current Ofsted position and the date it was checked, on one page, without leaving the conversation.
The brochure goes in the recycling and the guide goes on the kitchen table. It is the thing they show the person who did not come to the viewing, and the reason the second visit starts warmer than the first.
Sales advisors move between sites. Cover starts on a Saturday with no handover. A new advisor with this in front of them is useful on their first morning instead of their third month, and the site does not lose momentum because someone left.
The third one is the reason clients renew. The first two sell homes; the third protects the sale when your team changes.
Scope
Research
Write
Design
Amends
Print-ready
We scope it before we research it. That is the difference between a guide and a template.
The service
Four weeks from brief to print-ready artwork, drawn to your brand guidelines, down to the page shape.
Council, Ofsted, NHS, rail operator and town sources, plus a day walking the place. Club meeting days, market days, which walks are level.
Reference numbers run through to a full appendix. Anything unverifiable is left out rather than estimated.
One topic per page, in the page shape the site needs, designed to open flat at the right place mid-conversation. It emails as a PDF after a viewing, prints for the desk, and briefs whoever takes the site over next.
Journey times as a chart, school age ranges as a ladder, the regeneration pipeline with its actual status attached. Every figure is built from the sourced numbers, and anything schematic says so on the figure.
The method, drawn
01The ground Base map
It starts where most brochures stop: the roads, the river and the railway. The map anyone could print.
02The front door The site
Then the site itself, and what is genuinely within reach of it on foot. Five, ten and fifteen minutes out.
03Pannier Market Everyday
Thursdays and Saturdays, the length of Cheap Street. The first stop on a day out, three minutes from the Abbey.
04Sherborne Abbey Heritage
A Saxon cathedral from 705, and free to go in. Get the children to look up: the fan vaulting is the bit they remember.
05The station Travel
A direct train to London Waterloo, set out in the guide as departures and journey times rather than adjectives.
06The Old Castle Days out
A ruined twelfth-century bishop’s castle, an eight-minute drive. Children can get right in among it.
07Sixty-odd u3a groups Clubs
Every interest group listed with the day it meets. The page that tells a downsizer they will know people by the autumn.
08The guide Sourced & dated
Each of those becomes a line an advisor can say out loud, with a source behind it and a date on it. That is the product.
Contents pages, compared
Every guide starts with a conversation about one scheme: who is actually buying here, what they ask on the second visit, and what the site genuinely has that the next development down the road does not. The contents page comes out of that. It is not a menu we work through.
A market town, buyers with time
A city district, buyers with a commute
Three entries appear in both guides. Every other line exists in one and not the other.
Sherborne has sixty u3a groups and an unhurried day out. Leeds has a rail matrix and a Tuesday. Same method, same sourcing discipline, different document.
A day out trail
Two pages in the middle of both samples. Four or five stops, the walk or drive between each one, and what an afternoon actually costs.
Sherborne · a day out with the kids
Typical spend Free no charge £ under £10pp ££ £10–25pp
Thursdays and Saturdays the length of Cheap Street. Start here while everyone is fresh.
9.00 – 10.30 Town car parks Free
Saxon cathedral from 705. Get them to look up — the fan vaulting is the bit they remember.
10.30 – 11.30 Walk from market Free
Cafés, delis and bistros, much of the produce from the shops a few doors down.
11.30 – 12.45 Already parked £–££
A ruined twelfth-century bishop's castle. Children can get right in among it.
1.15 – 2.15 Visitor parking £ admission
Timings are a suggested shape for the day, not a timetable. In a live guide every admission, opening season and parking note is confirmed with the operator and dated at publication.
The pages viewers photograph.
Pricing
Most agencies will not put a number on the page. Ours is here, and it is the number on the invoice.
For a single development
£2,000
Fixed fee · one site
For several sites
£3,000
First site, including the format
Add-on
£450
Per site · half a day
Fixed fee, no hourly billing. The price on this page is the price on the invoice.
50% on commission, 50% on delivery. Four weeks from brief to print-ready artwork.
Copyright assigned in full on final payment. No licence terms attached.
No VAT is charged. The figures above are what you pay.
A guide that dates its claims needs a date service — we re-verify annually for £250 a site.
Build-to-rent: the same guide works as a letting tool — the area is what re-lets, and one guide serves every tenancy.
Agencies: white-label and subcontract terms available — ask.
Not ready to commission?
Send us the area material your buyers are given today. We check every factual claim against its current source and send back one page: what still stands, what has moved, and what cannot be sourced at all.
No fee, no follow-up sequence, and the page is yours to keep whatever you decide.
Questions
Four weeks from brief to print-ready artwork, with both rounds of amends inside that. The clock starts when the brief is agreed, not when the invoice clears.
You do. Copyright is assigned in full on final payment, with no licence terms attached — print it, host it, rework it, hand it to your agency.
Every claim in the guide carries a checked date, so staleness is visible rather than silent. Annual re-verification is £250 a site: every source re-checked, anything that moved corrected, and the artwork reissued.
Yes. Both sample guides are on this page as full PDFs, Sherborne and Leeds South Bank, with every source listed at the back. Read them the way a buyer would.
Possibly more than anyone. Send it over and we will check each factual claim against its current source, free, and return a single page showing what still holds. If it all stands up, you have lost nothing.
Brand guidelines and a contact. That is the whole list — the research, the writing, the sourcing and the design are the job you are paying for.
Work
Sample area guide · clubs and societies
Problem
A market town where the area sells the home as much as the home does, and collateral that stops at a list of nearby schools.
Solution
A 20-page guide naming 60-plus u3a interest groups with their meeting days, the Thursday and Saturday pannier market, every club at the Terrace Playing Fields, and a two-page day-out trail with walking times and typical spend at each stop.
Sample area guide · the working neighbourhood
Problem
A city-centre apartment district where the buyer is a commuting professional, and collateral that sells the building without ever describing the week they would actually live.
Solution
A 20-page guide built around a rail matrix from Leeds station, the hundred companies on the mill estate next door, and two illustrated spreads: a weekday hour by hour, and a Thursday night and Saturday that never leave the postcode.
Sample pages
Two towns, two buyers, one method. Sherborne is a market town written for someone with time; Leeds South Bank is a city district written for someone with a train to catch.
Cover Page 1
At a glance — the essentials on one page Page 3
Everyday essentials — markets, health, the high street Page 6
Clubs and societies — 60-plus u3a groups with meeting days Page 9
A day out with the kids — the two-page trail Pages 12–13
Sources — every claim referenced Page 19
Scoped, never templated
Every guide is drawn to the client's brand, contents and audience — the typefaces, the palette, the grid, the page shape and the running order all come out of the scoping conversation. These are the same two towns, researched the same way, designed four different ways. Nothing here was poured into a house style, because we do not have one to pour it into.
Sherborne — the almanac current
Portrait, serif, marginalia and chapter openers. Built for a market town and a buyer with time.
Leeds — the board current
Landscape, amber on black, mono data bands. Built for a city district and a buyer with a commute.
Sherborne — the earlier direction earlier
The same research, laid out warm and landscape. A different answer to the same brief.
Leeds — the earlier direction earlier
Graphite and signal blue, card-led. Also ours, also the same town.
Only the design brief changed. All four are our own demonstration documents for two sample towns, not client commissions.
First project
Pick one live site. £2,000 fixed, four weeks, and the guide is yours outright — whether or not you ever commission a second.
No obligation. No lengthy sales presentation.
Or start smaller: send us your existing area material and we'll return a one-page note listing what no longer holds. Free, no strings.
Usman Sharif, Customer Experience Manager, looks after every
client from scoping to delivery —
LinkedIn.
Harborne Advisory is run by Sami Chowdhury. The research is
done the way the samples suggest — from the sources, on the ground, and dated.
