Buyer Requirement & Matching Sheet (Excel)

Buyers who cannot separate what they need from what they would like search for a year. So do the agents working for them.

This sheet forces the distinction. Three non-negotiables, weighted preferences for everything else, and a match score against each property you hold — so when a buyer calls, you know in seconds which two of your forty listings to send rather than sending six and proving you were not listening.

Filling it in with the buyer, out loud, is also the fastest qualification conversation available. What someone rejects tells you far more than what they claim to want.

What is in the file

• A Buyer brief sheet: budget ceiling, timeline, funding status, decision makers, and the three non-negotiables
• A weighted preference block — configuration, floor, lift, parking, facing, age, locality — where each preference carries its own importance
• A Match scores sheet that scores each property against the brief and ranks them
• A "what they rejected and why" section, which is where the real criteria surface

Ask for exactly three non-negotiables

Not five. Three. The constraint is what makes the exercise useful — a buyer with seven non-negotiables has not made any decisions yet, and saying so kindly is part of the job.

Fill it in during the first call

Budget framed as service: "What range are you working with, so I only send you things that fit?" Then timeline, then funding, then who else is involved in the decision.

That fourth one is the most-skipped question in the business and the cause of most late-stage collapses. A spouse or parent who has not seen the flat will need to.

Update the rejections column

Every time they turn something down, write why. After three rejections the pattern is usually clearer than anything they told you at the start — and it is often different from what they said.

Questions

This is a working template, not legal, tax or financial advice. Requirements differ by state and by transaction — have a lawyer and a chartered accountant confirm anything that matters before you or a client rely on it.