How to Value a Property
The aim of this article is to show you how to value a property to a reasonable degree of accuracy. It can be used to value your own property if you are not yet ready to trouble the estate agents or to check how realistic the asking price is on a property that you are interested in.
The only way to value residential property is to look at the selling prices of what estate agents and surveyors call comparables (similar properties that have recently sold). Properties that are currently on the market are not comparables.
- Start by making a short list of the roads surrounding the property that have houses of a similar size and style. Log on to one of the websites that carries Land Registry Data and look up the selling prices of all properties on those roads in the last 3 years.
- Bring the selling prices up to date by using a combination of the Nationwide and HBoS house price indices. It may help the accuracy of the results if you select the quarter before the completion date as the selling date as this is when the price was probably agreed. Don’t forget to select the correct region.
- Drive past the houses on the list and see if they have had their lofts converted or any other type of extension and note how their external condition compares to the property that you are valuing. As you will not see the internal condition you have to use then exterior as a marker. Look out for any improvements that look very recent as these may have been done since the property was sold.
- Locate the comparable properties on Google Maps, switch to the satellite view and zoom in on the target property. This will help you to see if the property has been extended to the rear and how the sizes of the gardens compare.
- If you know which agents sold the comparable properties (think back to which board was up) you may be able to locate the details by going back through the archive of their websites. You can also check the archive of the property portals to try and locate a property.
- If one of the comparables is quite recent search Google using “for sale, the road name and the first part of postcode”. Look for the supplemental results and check the cached copy. Supplemental results are (amongst other things) pages which no longer exist at the returned URL, but which would have matched your search.
Most of these checks work better on houses than flats. If you are looking to estimate the value of a flat then ideally you want your comparables to be in the same block or an identical one. If you have enough time you could go to the local planning office and ask to view a copy of the block plan to see how the sizes compare.
If you are doing your calculations against the backdrop of a rising market you will need to make allowances for this. Completed sales take a couple of months to show up on Land Registry and the price on these sales was probably agreed 3 months or more before the completion date.