Deal quick-screen: is the landowner's call worth an hour?
Lesson 6 of 6 · Select the site against the program
1 · Learn the move · Cognitive verifier
A firm that buys direct does not get tidy packages. Deals arrive as a landowner's phone call, an email from the family's engineer with a concept sketch, an old plat, occasionally a broker's one-pager, and most of them are wrong for a 25-30 acre business community within five minutes. The skill is spending those five minutes on your box and not on the seller's story. The model's quiet failure is substituting its own idea of a good site: an acreage it counts before the floodway and the land the owner wants to keep, a zoning label it assumes is fine, a judgment call you never made. The cognitive verifier stops that. Before any verdict it restates your box in its own words, confirms it screened against those lines and no others, and names any line that needed a threshold or a judgment you did not give it, so you can see it and decide. Because every project closes into its own partnership on its own long-dated loan and you keep it for decades, a retained pad at your entrance or a shared curb cut is not a footnote; it is a line in the box. Arithmetic on the seller's own figures is fair and tagged as theirs. Then one verdict, WORTH AN HOUR, PASS or NEED MORE, and the one reason. The screen decides the next hour, never the site.
Quick-screen this site against my box from the landowner's call and his engineer's email. Each line PASS, FAIL or UNKNOWN with the words you used; arithmetic on the seller's figures tagged [verify] and labelled as theirs. Before the verdict, restate my box, confirm you screened only against it, and name any line that needed a threshold or judgment I did not give. Then one verdict, WORTH AN HOUR, PASS or NEED MORE, and the one reason. No view on price. [box] [call notes] [engineer's email]
2 · Your turn. You write the prompt
A landowner calls about the family's Brindlewick tract in Sarrowmead County, then his engineer emails. Your call notes: 'asking $4.2 million', 'wants to keep about 3 acres at the road for a future bank pad', 'would consider closing after a rezoning if the price holds'. The engineer's email: '31.5 acres per 2015 plat', 'about 6 acres in floodway along Pettle Creek per our concept sketch', 'zoned PUD - Mixed Use; 2008 concept plan shows retail pads and townhomes', 'water and sewer in Tamber Pike', 'one curb cut approved in 2008'. Your box: at least 25 usable acres after floodplain, wetlands and any land the seller keeps, for about 120,000 SF of single-story flex; flex office/warehouse permitted by right, or a closing after rezoning; public water and sewer with will-serve letters obtainable in diligence; truck-capable access; at least 120 days of diligence or a closing contingent on entitlement; a whole site the project's own partnership and long-term loan can hold, with no retained parcel, shared access or easement you cannot live with for the hold; land basis within your pro forma range, which you have not pasted. Write the prompt.
Write the prompt for this scenario as given, or swap in a real one from your own work. The score works the same either way.
Remember: the AI sees only your prompt, not this page. If the situation isn't in your prompt, it doesn't exist.
Optional. These shape the output when you run your prompt below, not your score.