The ten best development opportunities in your territory. Every Monday.
A weekly research brief for property developers in one council area — every registered land parcel measured, every public register joined, everything that changed since last Monday read, and the ten sites that matter written up with their sources. Not a search tool. The answer.
Why Torbay, why now
Torbay Council can show 1.65 years of deliverable housing land against the five it is required to. Its latest Housing Delivery Test score is 66%. The Planning Inspectorate has allowed 67 Torbay appeals since January 2023. And 31% of the council's own claimed supply is small windfall sites — under ten homes each — which is exactly the class of site this brief surfaces. Under the National Planning Policy Framework published on 17 August 2026, both the land-supply shortfall and the sub-75% delivery score feed the policy that supports development meeting an evidenced unmet need.
The Torbay planning climate, with every source →
What arrives on Monday
Changed this week. Dated events on watched parcels: a permission entering its last months, an appeal allowed nearby, a sale well below the street, a company owner's status changing. A quiet week is stated as quiet, never padded.
The standing ten. One page per site: what it is, why it surfaced, plot area and frontage and slope (measured, labelled as estimates), constraints, the ownership position and how we established it, planning history and precedent, what it could take, the risks, and the one thing to verify first.
Watchlist. Permissions lapsing within ninety days, appeals decided, policy changes with dates.
Outcomes. From the second issue: what happened to the sites we listed before — sold, application lodged, approved, refused — and the running hit rate.
Who it is for
Small and medium developers running one to ten projects; self-build and single-plot buyers; land agents working one patch. People who find sites through agents, auctions, driving round and word of mouth, and who value knowing before the site goes to market above almost everything.
It is not for anyone who wants a map, a filter bar or a mailing tool — keep whichever of those you use. It is not a valuation, a title report or advice, and it never contacts owners.
How we measure
Before the first brief was sent we replayed the method weekly over 2022–2024 on the data available at each date, and followed every site it flagged against matched control plots. Sites the engine flagged went on to receive a planning application of any kind within two years at 24%, against 8% for controls (232 flagged, 694 controls). Counting only applications for residential development, the rates are 6.5% against 0.6%. Both figures come from the same run; the caveats are stated in full.
The method, both runs, and what it cannot claim →
Territories and exclusivity
One council area, few seats: three Founder seats, then at most five Standard seats — or a single Exclusive seat. When you mark a site pursuing, it is withheld from the other seats in your territory for thirty days. When the seats are taken, the territory is closed.
Data sources, the exclusivity mechanics, and what we never do →
Pricing
- First 3 seats per territory
- Price held for the life of the seat
- Up to 5 seats per territory
- The only seat in the territory
Three-month minimum on the first seat of a newly opened territory; monthly after that. Under £4 a site page. What is included and what escalations cost →
Your territory
Torbay is the first territory and is opening now. Every other English planning authority opens by demand: name yours, and territories open in order of interest with Founder pricing to the first names on the list. You can also ask to see a full Torbay brief before deciding anything.
About
Windfall Brief is built by a land surveyor with twenty years of ground truth in Devon, and an engine that reads the public registers that matter — Land Registry, energy certificates, planning registers, appeal decisions, LiDAR terrain, flood and heritage layers — every week, and measures itself in public. When a site deserves it, the surveyor walks it. A newsletter can be copied; a professional opinion with a name on it cannot.
Questions developers ask
I have a map and a filter bar already. Keep them. You have the map and an hour on Monday; we have run every parcel against sixteen tests and read what changed since last week.
Why only ten? Ten is the number you will actually read. The rest stay in the pool and come back when something changes.
Prove it. The method page publishes both replay runs with their caveats; from the second issue every brief carries its own hit rate.