UK’s Top 10 Property Valuation Tools
Whether you’re buying a house or looking to sell, the internet is full of tools that can help you valuate properties for free. Here’s our top 10 list of free online property valuation tools (UK) you can use to get an accurate home valuation.
1. YOPA
Local Estate Agents usually offer free home visit valuations, but they can be very pushy and unreliable. From our experience, we think YOPA offer the easiest and most reliable home visit valuation service. You can pick a time/date to suit you and it’s free! (with no obligation to use them)
Free Valuation – https://www.yopa.co.uk/property-valuation
2. Zoopla
Second place goes to Zoopla. You can simply look at their listings and compare to your own, this is a great way to get a rough property valuation. Remember that most of the listed properties have optimistic asking prices.
Zoopla also have a few other tools that can help. They have a tool that gives a ‘Zoopla estimate’. Although it’s just a ballpark figure, it’s probably still the most accurate estimate tool available. They say that it’s just a ‘guide price’ of a property’s value. It’s calculated using their ‘secret formula that analyses millions of data points relating to property sales and home features UK wide’. (To get a estimate you are required to sign up).
Zoopla also have a tool that lets you check how much a property has been sold for in the past (any UK street). Using their ‘listing history’, you can see back into the property’s listing history with prices dating back to 1995. They also have useful colour coded heat maps that highlight street property values, it super cool.
Zoopla House Price Estimate Tool – http://www.zoopla.co.uk/house-prices/
Zoopla Listings – http://www.zoopla.co.uk/
Zoopla Heatmaps – http://www.zoopla.co.uk/heatmaps/
3. Rightmove
Rightmove is the biggest UK home search website with over 800,000 properties for sale in the UK. This makes Rightmove the best places to compare homes that are already on the market.
Rightmove also have a tool that allows you to search the actual sold prices of properties in the UK. They get the latest Sold House Price Information, straight from the Land Registry and the Registers Of Scotland. If available, they also show the past listings with photos, floorplans etc.
They also have a Price Comparison Report, this tool brings together Rightmove, Land Registry and Registers of Scotland current and historic prices in to one place. It just provides a few similar properties in the area to help you compare prices
Want to know what is happening in the property market? Rightmove have a Market Trends tool that provides an insight into market activity in any given area and it’s market history. You just enter a postcode and then see what is happening to the market in that area.
Extra: Rightmove also has a School Checker tool that gives detailed information about the schools surrounding a property. You can discover the probability of a child getting into different schools and see how the schools rank.
Rightmove Listings – http://www.rightmove.co.uk/
Rightmove Sold Prices Search – http://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices.html
Rightmove Price Comparison Tool – http://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-value.html
Rightmove Market Trends – http://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices-in-my-area.html
4. Onthemarket.com
Onthemarket don’t have any cool tools that give guide prices or valuations but they do have over 250,000 property listings. So you can use their website to see the local asking prices. Like every other website, they also have a sold prices tool.
Onthemarket Listings – https://www.onthemarket.com/
Onthemarket Sold Price Tool – https://www.onthemarket.com/sold-prices/
5. Mouseprice
They are the self-proclaimed ‘property expert’s choice’. They offer another free basic valuation tool. This tool only requires your postcode, nothing else, so it’s not at all the most accurate of tool. They provide a very broad price range estimate, for example £230,00 – £260,000. But it’s still a super simple tool and still provides a valid second opinion. They also have a Heatmap Tool that displays average values, growth rates and new build numbers.
Mouseprice Sold Prices and Valuations – http://www.mouseprice.com/
Mouseprice Property Heat Maps – http://www.mouseprice.com/property-for-sale/map/
6. Land Registry (for Wales and England)
The Land Registry have a house price data tool, price calculator and heat maps. This search tool lets see the latest residential property price data for all of the residential property sales in England and Wales that are lodged with us for registration. This is the data used by other websites like Zoopla and Rightmove, the data goes back as far as 1 January 1995 and includes property addresses, sold prices, date of transfer and property type. It’s not as pretty as the Zoopla/Rightmove tools, but it’s basically the same info.
As for the Price Calculator, their website says ‘The Land Registry Price calculator indicates general price movements, based on the Land Registry House Price Index and is intended to illustrate movements in price only. It does not take account of home improvements etc.‘ Here’s an example of a price calculator result:
The Land Registry HPI for Cardiff implies that a property worth £40,000 in January 1995 would be worth approximately £107,501 in February 2016.
This is equivalent to a change of £67,501 or 169%. A change of 169% spread over 21.1 years is equivalent to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.8 per cent.
Land Registry Tools – http://houseprices.landregistry.gov.uk/
7. Register of Scotland (for Scotland)
The Registers of Scotland is the Scottish equivalent of the Land Registry.
Register of Scotland – https://www.ros.gov.uk/
8. Nationwide
Nationwide have their own House Price Calculator, very similar to The Land Registry Price calculator. This tool is very basic, it requires the most recent valuation/sale price of a property and they simply increase it by the percentage value change of that area since that year… does that make sense? For example, if you enter £100,000 for the Valuation date (2015) with a property in Wales, it will add the percentage change of properties in Wales since then, +1.69, and give you a current valuation of £101,691.
It’s not the greatest tool, but it’s worth checking out as it gives you a good idea of how property price fluctuations work.
Nationwide House Price Calculator – http://www.nationwide.co.uk/about/house-price-index/house-price-calculator
LloydsBank have basically the same tool – http://www.lloydsbankinggroup.com/Media/economic-insight/house-price-tools/
9. The Halifax House Price Index
The Halifax House Price Index is the UK’s longest running house price data ‘thing’, this has data going back to January 1983. This isn’t really a tool, it’s more like information, but if you’re a bit of a geek, you’ll love their research and it will help you when it comes to property valuation.
Halifax House Price Index – http://www.halifax.co.uk/house-price-index/
10. External Factor Tools
Sure, these tools are great for valuation purposes, but they don’t take into account external factors that could effect a properties value to individuals living there, for example:
- Flood Risks
- Subsidence Risks
- Air Pollution
- Environmental Problems (for example: near landfill, radon gas levels)
- Local Crime Rates
- Bad Neighbours
- Broadband Coverage
- Transport Access
- Energy Bills
- Council Tax prices
- School Results
There are loads of tools that can help you with these external factors:
Flood risk and air pollution checks
– https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/environment-agency (Wales and England)
– http://www.sepa.org.uk/environment/water/flooding/ (Scotland)
Flood and Subsidence Risks – http://www.homecheck.co.uk/
Examine crime rates – https://www.police.uk/
Neighbourhood Profile – http://www.uklocalarea.com/
Check your broadband coverage – http://www.uswitch.com/broadband/postcode_checker/
Check Local School Results – https://www.gov.uk/school-performance-tables
Other useful links:
housesinsale.co.uk – how much is my house worth
So there it is, the UK’s Top 10 Property Valuation Tools that can help you value a property accurately. There are other valuation tools out there (Google it) but the majority of them are awful.
Have I missed something? You know a good tool that can help value a property? Let me know in the comment section below!