Online Valuation Report

MSE_Martin

The housing website Hometrack has produced an online valuation report that shows a huge raft of information (automatically produced) about the area around a specific property of your choice. The cost is usually £20 but I've pushed it to offer it to MoneySavers for £9.95.

Is it any good?

There are certainly a lot of statistics provided. Is it any good? If you're looking to bid on a home or sell your own, it is useful. Some of the info you can get elsewhere for free (see free info on the prices of houses sold in your area), however it is a convenient way to have a 20 page PDF with lots of stats others don't have.

The stats used are provided from banks and estate agents and conglomerated and then analysed. My overall view is it is useful and interesting but by no means obligatory.


How do you get the discount?

Go to Hometrack and click the housing valuation report. Then when paying enter the voucher code MSE213. It allows you to value up to 500 properties at £9.95 inclusive of VAT (each) - and the code will be live from tomorrow (9 May). The offer will terminate on 19 May 2006.

To gain access to the offer your users will need to enter the code 'MSE213' upon the credit card payment screen. For the sake of clarity, while this is an MSE code, there is no commercial link between MSE and home track, its just done to get MoneySavers it a bit cheaper.

Will it be cheaper anywhere else?

I doubt it, I pushed it hard. There is a chance though it may be doing some codes in newspapers. If you spot a voucher code from anywhere else doing it cheaper, please report it in the thread (and I will make sure it is moved to this top note).

Martin

If you try it please click reply and review the service to help other MoneySavers

alanw888

I have just tried this and would suggest some care before investing your 'tenner'.

On my property the 'Hometrack Valuation System' calculated a probable value on the property of £166k - £248k (£82k difference). Settling out at an estimated £207,000. (Local estate agents recent selling price valuation approx. £278k with higher ad price)

The report was based on info from 6 estate agents
3 between 7 & 8 Miles away
1 10 miles away
1 Over 20 miles away !
Only 1 was local at 1.2 miles distant.
HomeTrack approved agents are only selected from towns with a population of over 10000+ :doh:

The 5 'Selected Comparable Properties' were:-
0.3, 9.9, 10.0, 9.4, 9.8 miles distant from the property being valued.

(All above mileages from MS Autoroute 2006)

To be fair they did say that their confidence level in their valuation was LOW. This was displayed prior to taking your money.

The report was only 10 pages not the indicated 20 pages, lots of graphs and pie charts etc but these could be rather irrelevent due to the flaws (distance) in the data it was based on.

I would imagine that the system would work well in a heavily populated areas with similar property types experiencing high turnover rates but from my experience villages/rural areas would not seem to be not well covered.

I also used the FREE service advertised on the site and this gave the values of 5 very local properties (but sale dates over a 5 year period) only one of which was used in the paid for report. :think: (These properties with prices updated in line with house price increases, over the relevent periods, gave what seemed to be a much better indication of the property value and it was FREE).

I think my advice would be only to invest in this report if their confidence level was in the 'High' range which may reflect the use of LOCAL Agents with a good range of LOCAL properties on which to base 'your' valuation.

The Info, above, is supplied for your information, you must make up your own mind on how much use the report may be to you and if to invest your money on it or not.

Galstonian

I found that the following from their FAQ:

Can Hometrack value every house?

The Hometrack Valuation System can value any property in England, Wales & Scotland where the system successfully matches the postcode and house number or name.

Is a bit at odds with the results when I tried to get a report:

"Currently Valuations cannot be generated for Scottish postcodes"

johnfthetraveller

I'm assuming that as they don't visit, that it doesn't take into account the condition of the property in question. Fair enough, you can guesse an adjustment.

Does the report take into account how many rooms are in the property, and if it is an apartment or not? If not, I don't see how the information can be meaningful.

private_eye_3

I'm an estate agent and surveyor and speak from experience, there are a couple of things that you should be aware of with Hometrack.

1. johnfrith is quite right. There is no inspection carried out of your home. It's merely an average price of similar houses that have sold. This is fine as long as you have an “average house”. If you have anything out of the ordinary (extensions, large gardens etc etc) any figure given may not apply to you. The same goes if there are has been a low volume of sales and/or a low number of agents contributing data. alanw888's experience is a great example. His given figure was worthless in the real scheme of things.

2. One source of information used by Hometrack is a monthly survey that is faxed (or completed on-line by) to Estate Agents of basic questions such as average asking prices for house types, time taken to complete sales etc. There is little incentive for less diligent Agents to spend much time on these figures as they receive no payment for doing it but they are listed as an “approved agent” somewhere on Hometrack’s website. What Hometrack’s selection criteria to choose agents isn’t entirely clear to me.

3. If one of the sources used by Hometrack is the land registry sales figures then you can get this information yourself and for free from sites such as Nethouseprices. If you are looking to live in a certain area or better still certain streets. Put them into Nethouseprices and you can get the last number of years sales figures for those streets. Drive round and then look at the houses. Compare them. Bear in mind though that Nethouseprices does not know how many bedrooms are in a property. What condition it was in when it sold. Just price, when sold and house type. Also bear in mind that it isn’t always correct. Not often but sometimes. Freaky results are probably just that. Freaks. Disregard them.

4. If you are still a unsure. Consult an expert. That's what we are there for. Not all estate agents are charlatans and frauds. Some of us have worked very hard to get where we are. Look for R.I.C.S. (Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors) qualified agents as well as N.A.E.A.. Advertising bit over with!

ableandy

I have to agree with the comments here. The valuation range is was so wide on my property (£88,000 - £145,000), I could have done that for myself. Given that the highest price paid in my street in the last 12 months is £92,000 and the fact that House Prices are fairly stagnant I wish I had saved my money and picked my own price.

At least the charts looked nice.

Andy

simonpearce

ditto all above.

Undervalued my terraced house by about £30k and had the cheek to say it had a high confidence level!!

Of course you'd have a high confidence level selling a house for 30k less than it's worth!!!

AVOID!!

Simon

PS Come on Martin - take this offer offline before any more of us waste our money!

alanw888

Having had more time to think about this 'offer' (See my post top of page) and read the comments of others I now think that a 'Money Saving' site is not the place for it. I agree with a previous comment (Simonpearce) that Martin should remove this from the site as soon as possible and ensure that it isnt advertised as 'recommended' by him.

I think we most likely all have our own views on Estate Agents - this site has really just confirmed mine.

Deadly7

Thanks everyone, just saved me £10.00 as I am not going to buy.
So MSE does work.

Come on MARTIN - REMOVE THIS NOW...............please

CAHA

I normally read all the posts before proceeding. On this occasion, I didn't and I wish I had. Like all the others was very disappointed with end result. Would have been better off putting the tenner on the lottery...at least then I would have the satisfaction on knowing I was throwing it away...!

Dora_the_Explorer_5

Reading all the posts the words 'Buying a pig in a poke' spring to mind. Having a reasonably accurate value put on a house using this method - sight unseen - flies in the face of common sense. However, it's certainly a money earner for the company providing the valuations. In the short term.