Snoop's Paradise! (nethouseprices.com)

Member Name: snowflake5

Product:	nethouseprices.com
Date:	06/02/06 (5117 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Find our what your neighbours paid for their house

Disadvantages: Your neighbour can find our what you paid for yours.

Nethouseprices.com was founded in 2005 by Steve Dunnett, when the Freedom of Information Act made house price data held by the Land Registry available from 1st January 2005. His insight was that people would prefer to access the information via the net rather than visit or write to a Land Registry office for the information, especially as the Land registry charge a fee for the information. Dunnett decided to pay the fee to access the information in bulk and distribute it free on his web-site which is funded by advertising, mainly from the financial sector. The site is now experiencing 500,000 hits a day.


What does the site do?

It allows you to type in an address or post-code and look up what price a house sold for and the date on which it sold. The first thing I did was type in my own postcode. It brought up the street name and said there had been seven sales registered. I then clicked on the street name, and it listed each house, with house number and post-code, the price it sold at, the date it sold on and whether it was a flat, terrace, semi-detached or detached. Unfortunately it doesn't list how many bedrooms a house has, but if you are familiar with a street, this is easy to work out. Beside each entry is a link to a map, showing the exact location.

As you can tell, this is snooper's heaven. You can find out what your neighbours paid for theirs, or look up your boss's house, or find out what Mr and Mrs Blair paid for their house (providing you know the address).

It's also helpful if you are buying a property, as you no longer need be vulnerable to estate agent's (usually false) patter on the lines of "the house next door went for xyz, therefore this house is an absolute bargain".

You need to be aware that a house is registered with the Land Registry only after a sale has been completed - i.e. only after contracts have been exchanged, completed and money and keys have changed hands, does your solicitor then register you as the owner with the Land Registry, together with the price paid and the date of completion. Nethouseprices get their data from the Land Registry a month in arrears. So there will be a lag between when an offer is made and when the price is registered on the site. In a rising market, the prices at the land registry will be below those being currently offered, in a falling market, they will be higher. Still, it's a useful tool to be able to bargain with. You should be able to gauge straight away whether the vendor is asking in excess of what the rest of the street has paid.

The data for England and Wales only goes back to April 2000, and for Scotland to May 2000


What else does the site do?

They keep expanding the site - as of this month, you can now also look up houses for sale, houses to rent and mortgages (i.e. on line estate agents services). There is a tab called "My Town" that allows you to search for schools, flood risk, crime statistics for the town, and noise pollution. They are intending to add council tax bands, planning applications and local ameneties (supermarkets, restaurants etc). They also have a tab called "News" which lists links to all news articles on the web to do with UK property.

The site is free for ordinary users - there is an advanced service for estate agents for £100 per year. To look up the price a house sold for, you do not need to register with the site and sign in. For everything else you do, but registration is free.

I recommend this site - if nothing else, it provides entertainment in the form of nosiness!

Summary: A useful tool when buying a house, and good for snooping too