Tuesday 18 August 2009

Check out the house price trends in your town or postcode

If you want to know the trends for house prices in your town, county or even postcode (the first part of the postcode - usually 3 or 4 characters) www.home.co.uk provides really informative graphs showing trends in sold house prices for your area.

To access this information all you have to do is click the blue 'Home Information' button on the extreme right hand side of the screen (it's the 5th button down out of 6). This will then open up a sub menu. You want to click on 'House Prices and Trends'.

Simply click on your county or, in the box marked 'Location' type in your town name or postcode.

Chances are you are going to be interested in more precise information about the price trends for your town or your postcode. So, say you live in Welwyn Garden City, you just type in 'Welwyn Garden City' or the first 3 or 4 digits of your postcode, eg 'AL8'.

Bob's your uncle, you have a selection of reports to view:

Asking Price Reports for AL8
Time On Market Reports for AL8
Selling Price Reports for AL8
Sold House Price Summary in AL8 by Month

Within each of these headings you can view graphs detailing the activity by type of property, eg detached, semi-detached, terraced or flat so you can really see how your property fits into the scheme of things.

So whether you live in Penzance, Perth or anywhere in between you can get a good understanding of the state of the property market where you live even before you put your property on the market.

House Selling? Check this out!

If you want unbiased information on how much your property is worth you'd do well to look at www.zoopla.co.uk, it's a fabulous resource to check out the current estimated value of pretty much any residential property in the UK.

I've been having a play around with it over the last few months and it's always been able to find the properties I'm interested in.

One of the things you're going to love about Zoopla! is that you can amend the details it has listed for your house and make sure that they're correct. Perhaps you've added an extension which includes an extra bedroom or bathroom - obviously, this could put a few thousand onto the estimated value of your house.

The best bit of all, if you're just thinking about putting your house on the market there's a fabulous feature called 'Tempt Me'. All you have to do is put in the amount you would seriously consider selling your house for. Of course, anyone looking at the website would be able to see how much Zoopla! values your house for so, unless you have a really unique property, or perhaps have just struck oil in your back garden, it's probably best to put in a realistic 'Tempt Me' price!

Thursday 6 August 2009

Has the residential property market really passed the bottom?

It seems from today's news reports that the property market has passed it's trough and is now expected to rise...

Reports in the press suggest that the limited supply of suitable properties on the market is causing buyers to increase their offers in order to secure the purchase of the house they want.

But is this boost a 'dead cat bounce' or is growth set to stay?

I don't know, but if you're looking to sell and want to take advantage of this boost before it possibly reverts to a decline, I'd get my property on the market ASAP.

With the nation knowing that the massive funding of the banking crisis will have to be paid for, unemployment on the rise and the redundancy payments and savings of the unemployed drying up we're likely to be in for tougher times ahead.

Surely this growth will not last for long?

What is your home worth? Free house prices and current home values