The Footfall Certificate: A Complete Guide for Landlords, Brokers and Property Managers

Every commercial listing in the world says the same thing: "excellent location, great foot traffic." None of them proves it. A Footfall Certificate closes that gap. It is a one-page, independently verified count of the pedestrians who pass a specific unit — seven days of video-verified traffic, peak hours, weekday-versus-weekend split and the street's city percentile — sealed with a QR code that any tenant, bank or buyer can scan and check for themselves. This guide explains what goes into a certificate, how landlords and brokers produce one without hardware, and why a verified number leases space faster than an adjective ever will.

If you own, list, or manage street-level commercial space, this is the page to start from. Each section links to a deeper how-to or audit guide.

Key takeaways

• A Footfall Certificate turns "great location" into a checkable number: seven days of counts, peaks, and a street percentile on one QR-sealed page.
• It needs no hardware — the building's CCTV, an IP camera, or a phone in the window is enough.
• Its credibility comes from being auditable (disclosed method, sampling window, error bars), not from a marketing accuracy claim.
• A single certificate is $149; a portfolio of ten is $990; brokers certify their first listing for $149.
• The right question is never "what is the number" but "can a counterparty verify it" — and a defensible certificate is built so they can.

What a Footfall Certificate actually is

A footfall certificate is a document, not a dashboard. Panel-data platforms sell you a subscription seat and a screen of modelled estimates; hardware vendors sell you a sensor bolted above a door you may not even control yet. A certificate is different: it is a single artifact, tied to one address and one week, that a third party can hold up and trust.

Concretely, a FootfallCert certificate reports:

• Total pedestrians past the unit across the observed period, per direction.
• Peak hours and quiet hours, so a prospective tenant can see when the street actually works.
• Weekday versus weekend shape — a café and a solicitor read that split very differently.
• Street percentile, benchmarking the address against other streets in the same city.
• The method and its limits: how the count was produced, how much of each day was observed, and the confidence attached to any projection.

That last line is the one competitors leave off, and it is the one that makes the rest believable. For a section-by-section walkthrough, see how to read a Footfall Certificate.

How a certificate gets made (no hardware, no install)

The whole point is that you can certify a unit that has no tenant, no sensor and no fit-out. The pipeline is deliberately boring:

1. Capture footage. Point any camera at the storefront — a phone on a window mount, the building's CCTV feed, or an IP camera. See how to capture footfall footage with a phone or CCTV.
2. Draw the counting line. You mark the virtual line across the pavement that a person has to cross to be counted. How to draw counting lines covers where to place it and why.
3. The engine counts. A computer-vision model detects and tracks each pedestrian silhouette and records every line crossing, per direction. No faces are stored and no identities are created — the engine counts silhouettes, not people.
4. Sampling becomes an estimate. Where a full day was not filmed end to end, observed coverage is scaled up with an explicit confidence interval. How seven days of sampling becomes a defensible estimate explains the maths in plain language.
5. The certificate is sealed. You get the one-page PDF, an interactive online version, and a QR-verified public page — plus an embeddable badge for the listing.

Ready to run one? Start on the pricing page or, if you list for a living, the broker page where the first certificate is $149.

Why a verified number rents space faster

A vacant unit is not free while you wait. Depending on the market, a month of vacancy costs roughly €2,000–8,000 in lost rent (an internal estimate — every asset is different), and EU landlords increasingly give rent-free incentives that can reach double digits as a share of the whole lease value. In that context, $149 to make your listing the credible one is not a data cost — it is a vacancy-reduction cost.

Verified footfall helps three ways:

• It shortens the shortlist. Traffic is the single biggest unknown a tenant carries into a viewing. Remove it and your unit jumps ahead of every listing that still says "busy area."
• It defends the asking rent. "Top 20% street in the city" is a negotiating anchor a discount never gives you.
• It compounds. The verified-footfall badge sits on the listing and on the agency site, and every scan advertises the next certificate — the same growth loop the old website hit-counter rode.

Verification is the product

Here is the objection every honest broker raises: the owner commissioned the count, so why would a tenant believe it? The answer is built into the artifact. The methodology is disclosed and immutable; the sampling window and error bars are printed on the face; and the numbers are never "adjusted" for anyone. A count you cannot edit after issue, and that anyone can re-derive from a public method, survives the conflict-of-interest question by design. That is the whole thesis behind why you should never trust an unverified footfall number and how to audit a footfall claim before you list a space.

If you want the underlying accuracy science — what MAPE and confidence intervals really mean, and how video counting is validated against ground truth — that lives on our engine's shared research and is summarised in footfall accuracy, MAPE and confidence intervals.

The cluster: everything in this guide, in depth

Producing a certificate (how-to)

• How to capture footfall footage with a phone or CCTV
• How to draw counting lines for an accurate count
• How to read a Footfall Certificate, number by number
• How seven days of sampling becomes a defensible estimate

Trusting a certificate (why-verify)

• Why you should never trust an unverified footfall number
• How to audit a footfall claim before you list a space
• Footfall accuracy, MAPE and confidence intervals explained

Who this is for

FootfallCert is built for the landlord side of the lease: owners of street-retail units, listing brokers who want to win mandates with evidence, and property managers certifying a whole portfolio. If you are the tenant trying to decide whether an address earns its rent before you sign, that is a different job — our sister brand StreetProof is built for you, and the two share the same verification engine.

When you are ready, see the pricing, look at a sample certificate, or certify your first listing for $149 as a broker.

Frequently asked questions

What is a Footfall Certificate? A one-page, independently verified count of pedestrian traffic outside a specific commercial property — seven days of counts, peak hours and a street percentile, sealed with a QR code anyone can check.

Do I need to install hardware? No. It works from the building's existing CCTV, an IP camera, or a phone filming the storefront. Nothing to mount, so you can certify empty units.

How much does it cost? $149 per property, $990 for a portfolio of ten, and the first listing $149 for brokers. The QR verification page and listing badge are included.

How can a tenant tell it is genuine? The QR code opens a public page with the certificate ID, the counting method, the sampling window and the error bars. The record is immutable and the numbers are never adjusted.