What Buyers Check Before Buying: A Seller's Guide

Once a buyer has found your lot and asked us to hold it, the next stage is due diligence. Project documents are shared with the buyer and checked against what they need. Sellers who are ready for this stage close deals. Sellers who are not tend to lose buyers to someone else while they search for a missing verification report.

This page looks at due diligence from your side of the table: what buyers are trying to find out, what they will ask for, and how to organise your files so the answers are waiting for them.

What a buyer is trying to establish

Behind every question in a due diligence list sit five concerns:

1. The units are real. They exist on a public registry, were issued under a recognised standard, and match what you described.
2. You can sell them. You hold them, or have a clear contractual right to.
3. They have not been used. No one has retired them or sold them to another buyer.
4. They fit the buyer's purpose. The vintage, programme, project type and any CORSIA or authorisation conditions match the buyer's policy.
5. The project will not embarrass them. There are no unresolved complaints, safeguards problems or credibility questions that could surface after the buyer makes a public claim.

Keep these five in mind and most requests will make sense.

What buyers usually ask for

Registry evidence

Expect requests for your project's registry page, the issuance record with serial number ranges, and a recent account statement showing the units in your account. Traders should add the transfer record from the developer, or the signed contract if units have not moved yet. A buyer will check serial numbers against the public registry themselves, so they must line up exactly. Our page on registries and serial numbers explains what they will look at.

The core project documents

• Project Design Document, showing the baseline, the methodology and the monitoring plan.
• Validation report from the independent auditor.
• Verification report for the monitoring period that produced the units being sold.

Buyers will read the auditor's findings and any clarification or corrective action requests. If a past verification raised issues, include the response that resolved them. Hiding a finding that a buyer later discovers does far more damage than explaining it upfront. The buyer's checklist for these documents is in project documents buyers receive.

Eligibility proof

If you are offering units for CORSIA or with Article 6 status, buyers will ask for the host-country authorisation letter and evidence of how and when the corresponding adjustment will be applied. If authorisation is still in progress, give a dated status note. Do not describe units as eligible on the strength of an application.

Quality and integrity questions

Buyers increasingly ask about the points that critics of carbon markets raise:

• Additionality: why the project needed carbon finance to go ahead.
• Permanence: for forestry and blue carbon, how the project handles the risk of stored carbon being released, and the size of any buffer contribution.
• Leakage: whether the project simply moved emissions elsewhere.
• Baseline: whether the assumed "without project" scenario is reasonable.

Have a short written answer for each, in plain language, with references to the relevant section of the PDD.

Community and safeguards

For cookstoves, agriculture, forestry and other projects involving local people, buyers will ask about consent, benefit sharing and grievance handling. Copies of stakeholder consultation records, community agreements and a log of any complaints with how they were resolved all help.

Company information

Buyers also check you as a counterparty: your company registration, the people authorised to sign, and sometimes references from earlier buyers. Large corporates may run their own onboarding checks.

Building a clean data room

A data room is simply an organised folder that you can share with a qualified buyer. It does not need special software. What it needs is order.

A few habits make a big difference:

• Name files clearly, with the document type and date, so a reviewer does not have to open each one to know what it is.
• Keep one current version of each document and archive superseded ones separately.
• Add a one-page summary at the top: project name, registry ID, methodology, vintages on offer, quantities, authorisation status and a contact for questions.
• Make sure the figures in your summary, your listing and your registry record all agree. Inconsistencies are the most common reason a buyer slows down.

Responding to questions

Answer promptly and in writing. If you do not know something, say when you will. If the honest answer is unfavourable, give it with context. Buyers in this market talk to each other, and a reputation for straight answers is worth more than any single deal.

Put your data room together before you list, then register the project and add your lots on the seller intake form. If you would like us to look over the pack first, get in touch with the desk.