Evaluate your home for free Article Discussion

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MadMonkey

That is really useful and all the links are very informative:j

The environment agency site is very helpful as it shows the flooding risk for our area - we are near a river but uphill of it and this site shows our house as never flooding even in extreme cases.

UpMyStreet has us needing snorkels to live in this postcode so shows how way off that is !

My house is worth more than it's on the market for so i may give nay viewers the web address of the house value site:rotfl:

kingkano

try www.flashearth.com to bring all the map sites together (including googleearth) Lovely for swapping between them all and see who has the best coverage of your house

mike_pearson

Most of the links cover England and Wales only. Any ideas about comparable information for Scotland (or Northern Ireland for that matter)?

harryhound

MadMonkey wrote: »

That is really useful and all the links are very informative:j

My house is worth more than it's on the market for so i may give nay viewers the web address of the house value site:rotfl:

I've just checked a house in which I am interested. The valuation system has again valued it at more than its asking price. I tried it as a buyer, seller, and an interested party using different "spam" email addresses. Seemed to make no difference.

Un-installing the rubbish partial central heating reduced the price by 5K in 1/4 million. (Perhaps I should play with its 50+ age and see what that does).

I also checked the flooding - subsidence - etc. web site and got a yellow traffic light for subsidence and a RED one for the "brown field" aspect. I had already checked the old Ordnance Survey maps and discovered a former pottery on the other side of the paddock at the back. I very much doubt that is any cause for concern, but it could be a problem for someone trying to sell!

I wonder if the valuation site over values to flatter both sellers and buyers, as it has a vested interest in a lively house market, where "trees can grow to the sky":rolleyes:

All in all a really valuable gathering together of sites that would be useful BEFORE going to visit potential sellers (and their neighbours;)).

Harry.

Afterthought for Madmonkey: Add your post code to your posting above and we can all guess the colour of your car parked outside ?

I've tried the "flashearth" link, recommended above and zoomed in to a still smudgy MSE aerial photo that is about 4 years out of date. I tried again with http://local.live.com/ and zoomed in again to the same (?) smudgy photo BUT when I clicked the skyscraper icon in the top left corner, I got a much clearer aerial photo taken about a year ago. I think these are the "Virtual Earth" photos that Tesco is trying to use on its new property for sale portal website (That the Estate Agents would like to strangle at birth?).
There is some suggestion that you are not allowed a good aerial photo if you are near a "sensitive" site - but that might be an urban myth. Anyone got a post code for GCHQ ?
Ah it seems that Microsoft use this company to provide these clear images BUT so far they have only done major cities. Birmingham is there as is London and some of the home counties outside the M25. It really is great being able to spin a house round as you look at it !

Pictometry

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https://www.pictometry.com/ - 13k - Cached - Similar pages[/SIZE]

jennynoo

I tried the propertypriceadvice website but the downloaded pdf did not tell me what effect doing up my flat would have. So I tried looking at the difference between a flat that needs work and one in good condition but I got the same result. Therefore I don't think much of this website. The price range of 65k also wasn't very helpful.

Imi_2

Hi Everyone,

This site www.ipbre.com tries to predict international housing price trends, don't know how accurate they are! not checked. As Martin said, you can never really predict house price trends, as they have a mind of their own! But they had good country profiles which were free and I did'nt have to register for. That I found useful.

Phirefly

I'm surprised to see a link to HPC. Even though the article warns that the site has an agenda, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with seeing it as a source of reference recommended on mse....

harryhound

Phirefly wrote: »

I'm surprised to see a link to HPC. Even though the article warns that the site has an agenda, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with seeing it as a source of reference recommended on mse....

Surely all sites have an agenda? There are one hell of a lot of people out there getting rich on the backs of struggling mortgage payers (me included:D).

I'm old enough to remember 1987 - 1992 when prices were falling fairly regularly or houses were not selling at all (Bradley Stoke near Bristol got the name of Sadly Broke because everyone was in negative equity); but I cannot remember any businesses linked to house building/estate agency saying "come back in 6 months time, you will probably get it a bit cheaper?"

"Markets always do what they have to do to make fools of the majority?"

owned_by_2_Siamese

Please be careful with the Homecheck site. A couple of months ago when buying a new house we used the free service and nearly had a heart attack - it was high flood risk, high pollution - no radon was about the only thing we were green on. As a result we commissioned an environmental report - that totally contradicted the Homecheck warnings,. Being cynical, and noting the caveats about 'homechecks opinion' I believe they pint a grim picture to panic people into paying for the survey. Not normally considering myself stupid - the fact that the house is half way up a large hill, in a completely rural area (past industrial use? turned out to be farming!!!!!!) I should have seen through it!! Even the dept of envionment site had very low risk of flooding for the postcode which contradicted homecheck!

Use it - but keep your wits about you !!!

landgirl100

Just checked out some of these sites - now I'm really confused! The Nationwide site gave a figure for my house which is about what I would expect - but the other one gave a figure nearly twice that! Homecheck said I'm going to be poisoned by radon and my house will fall down a hole, but I won't get flooded. I'm really not sure whether use of these sites ought to be encouraged as some people (not MSE types!) might put more value on the information than is justified. Interesting, though!