House Price Spy Blog

The big news of the last day or so was the collapse of one of the previously ’safe’ financial institutions in the UK, Bradford and Bingley who have been part bought over by the UK government and partly by the Santander Group of Spain who also bought over The Abbey Group. I personally have savings with them but as mentioned £35,000 of your savings will be guaranteed by the Government. All banks and buildings have a brand which they propigate of safe investment and old grannies depositing their giro every week for decades, but what are actually up to? After Bradford and Bingley, Northern Rock and HBOS who will be next to feel the crunch?

With the fall in the housing market there are many casualties (ie apart from you and me) estate agents are one. With some branches selling only one property a week times are dire. Many are reporting having 50% more properties still up for sale, and profits dramatically down on only 1 year.

Are we pricing our properties too high? While you are more likely to sell by lower the price, the time for a ‘firesale’ has not come. Estate Agents will get a percentage of the sale price usually 1%-2%, which means you dont have to set yourself a time limit. There will be more and more sellers happy to ’sit’ on a property. Could it be time for estate agents to consider a new way of charging sellers? They could consider charging a flat fee of £750 to £1000 rather than a percentage, which this would cost them it would get more work from clients.

From the boom when over 100,000 properties were sold per month, estate agents are just one group who need to look at themselves more honestly. The average time taken to sell is up from 6 weeks to 14 weeks across the UK.

The changes in Stamp Duty have made no difference, but hopefully wont cost the UK taxpayer too dearly. ‘Single reports’ are another reason to hang on rather than sell up!

You can get an exellent valuation for your property by using House Price Spy, you can get data from the last 8 years with stats to compare to other areas and streets. You can save any results and look at graphs which compare results. We will even email you with new sales and statistics for areas.

Price you property right, and dont undersell it-it has not suddenly become worthless in the space of 6 months! Look at similiar house in similiar areas and what people have been paying rather thanw hat next door payed. This all depends on what your position is and whether you are compelled to move and what your plans for the future are.

Sky+ is the easy way to watch and record TV, record a digital version of your favourite shows or series with just a touch a button. No programming your DVD player or waiting just easy reliable and flexilble viewing. Get £51 off your Sky+ box and free installation when you sign up for Sky Digital TV. Plus you get free 2GB broadband, free weekend and evening calls and even a £15 online discount!

You can build you own perfect entertainment and communications pack age from just £17 per month and add faster broadband, free calls packages, Sky Movies and Sky Sports plus Multi Room and Sky+.

Sky are the market leading in this field, so it could be worth checking out their present deals.

Sign up with Sky Digital and get a third off Sky+, free broadband and a £15 online discount.

While US financial giant The Lehmann Brothers recent colapse wont mean much to many of us the dramatic bailing out and ‘closing down’ sale of HBOS (Halifax Bank Of Scotland) to Lloyds TSB will have raised a few eyebrows across the finanacial world. it was only a few short years ago that Bank Of Scotland were THE big beast in UK finance with ordinary savers and investors complaining about the sky high profits that were being made, and also about how ethical the money invested in BOS was.

A few years down the line and upward of 40,000 HBOS employees are facing Christmas on the dole, and the government has had to bend monopoly rules to accomodate the amalgamation which allows HBOS to avoid going bust. HBOS/Lloyds TSB will have a huge 33% of the UK lending market.

50% of the value of HBOS stocks were wiped in the space of one day and this raises questions about the stability of UK finance. Questions about Gordon Brown’s role in the ‘borrowing culture’ that existed during his chancellorship have arisen, how could a previously ‘prudent’ financier inspire so little confidence?

After The Northern Rock and US problems the UK government has set a trend of forcing lenders to change their ways and become more realistic, what this will do for competition in the marketplace where lending is down to a 20 year low and many lenders have withdrawn previous loans.

While supporting financial institutions is all very well for the overall picture how does this affect the consumer in real terms? The whole mess has been caused by mismanagement by lenders rather governments charging too much stamp duty, or even borrowers paying too much for property. The government should use it’s time coming up with a medium term legislation for lenders in terms of what they can offer, to whom and rules about inter-lender finance.

It should be noted in all this that £35,000 of your savings are guaranteed, so if you spread your savings across a few lenders and types of investment there will be no problem. Gordon Brown was telling us a few months ago to save more for our old age…with many pensions halfing in value in recent days this is looking like folly!

The property market has been the main topic of discussion in the media and it does now appear the both the UK and US governments are concerned enough to put serious money into working through the slump in prices. Since my last blog, the US government has invested billions in two ailing financial institutions while Gordon Brown has pledged billions to raising the lowest level of Stamp Duty and bailing out struggling borrowers who mortgaged in more bouyant times.

With speculation over the future of the PM in terms of his leadership and the upcoming election this could be the last gamble Gordon Brown has to offer. The ‘Tony and Gordon’ package profited massively from the inflated property market in the last 10 years, and now are counting the cost of the inevitable re-adjustment in prices to a viable level.

The backdown on 10% income tax was fairly embarrassing, but this seems to be the one thing which could tip the balance away from New Labour with less than promising poll predictions and by-election results.

Hopefully we will see a bit more leadership in the months to come, with a plan which they stick to! There have been two or three backdowns in recent months (Northern Rock, 10% income tax etc) which never looks good. Are the government expecting people to run out and sell their houses for thousands less just to save an average £550 on Stamp Duty, sounds like a hollow promise-at least we wont have to find billions to fund it if no-one takes it up!

When you claim your free membership of House Price Spy you get access to millions of sold house price since 2000 in England, Scotland and Wales. Apart from that there are various other ways to gain from free membership…

House Price Spy members benefits are as follows:

Email notifications when houses are sold in your chosen areas.

Statistics and comparisons - clearly compare streets, houses, area, regions and even countries.

Save areas you are interested in for future reference.

See unlimited house prices from across the UK.

Get exclusive competions, offers and deals from propety related store.

The chance to opt in for our regular newsletter with notifications and offers.

Membership is 100% free, we ask that you give a working email to complete the joining process. We do not pass any details you give us to third party companies and are pround to be a part of the Data Protection Act.

House Price Spy will occasionally bring you relevant offers from property related stores and services. This is to aid us in bringing you free house prices. This week we bring you Norwich Union home Insurance who have famously high quality cover and some great deals when you buy online.

Save up to half on your home insurance and rest assured that are with one of the most trusted and successful financial institutions around with Norwich Union! 24/7 dedicated claims line and unbeatable service should you have a problem.

Below are a few of the best reasons to have your home Insurance with Norwich Union:

You get 15% online discount!

50% off combined home and contents when you have 5 years no claims!

Cover against accidental damage as standard and approved trades men for all jobs.

Free moving cover for all your contents while you move them.

Norwich Union are an Aviva Company meaning they are one of the most stable financial institutions in the world, and relied upon by millions of families across the world.

Save up to 50% on quality home insurance at Norwich Union

Some questions you may ask about House Price Spy, and the free service we offer in general.

Why do you only have data from 2000? The Land Registry system was only set up to format data and release it that way from the year 2000. We may be able to get earlier data but this is not currently available at the present time.

Why dont you cover Northern Ireland Or The South of Ireland? There is no system to collect and release data such as we have for England and Wales or Scotland.

My house was sold last month and is not yet featured on the site, why is this? It takes from 4 to 6 weeks for the government bodies involved to release data so there will be a slight delay between a property being sold and it being detailed on House Price Spy

Why can you release data that is private to me? All data is Public Domain and can be looked up by anyone. We are part of the Data Protection Scheme which legislates how we can use and store this data safely.

How acurate is the data you publish? The data is exactly as given to us by the Land Registry and Registers of Scotland, updates and corrections are made regularly to resolve any technical issues arising before we received the data.

How do you manage to run the site without charging for data? We have selected relevant advertising on the site such as home insurance and broadband providers. Please see the great deals we have to help support the site.

These are just a few of the question our members have asked over the almost 3 years we have been live, if you have any of your own contact us at the main site.

House Price Spy V2 has had even more improvements in the last few days, with new and updated pages and features added. We have added updated version of pages from the old site plus a few new pages that are brand new to the new version of the site.

The following pages and features have been added:

Property Market Tips - Make the most of your property with the right DIY, presentation and layout.

Buying A House - Borrowing, bidding, getting a mortgage and dealing with estate agents.

Selling Your House - Financial stuff, preparing your property for sale and setting targets.

Member Benefits- Apart from getting millions of item of government data which would ususally cost £1 each you get quite a few fringe benefits with membership of House Price Spy: Watch Lists, SatNav or temporary watch listings, Property Alerts, Statistical Graphs for each result page, Newsletters, Email Updates, Property Trends, Areas such as Greatest Activity and Fastest Rising Areas.

Useful Links - Sometimes you are better having a number before you need it, we have tracked down sites that will make every aspect of owning, buying and running your home easier from Gas Safety and kiddie safety to ombudsmen, financial stuff and ‘tax and allowances’.

There will be more added to the site in the weeks to come, as always we have plans to add more functions as time goes on that will allow you to more with the data we have.

As mentioned in a previous blog, House Price Spy has been totally rethought and expanded with a contemporary new look and we have taken the opportunity to add new features and functions.

While you can see most of the changes in terms of navigation and cosmetics I think it would be good to go through some of the more technological alterations.

SatNav - A new function which allows you to compare and get statistics on streets/areas/towns without saving them to your watch list. Select areas to be compared and go to Satnav at the top left and then click on ‘Create Reports’ to compare stats on these areas.

My Alerts - You can manage what commications we send you and what updates you receive and how (and how often) you receive. Choose as many results pages you wish and get alerted when there is any activity.

Useful Links section - an all new links section with links to variosu property related sites such as government data, TV tips, moving/selling tips and property finance.

We have added a list of trusted merchants selling broadband and car insurance and easy to understand graphs for each result page.

As promised in recent weeks we have given House Price Spy a complete overhaul in terms of cosmetic stuff, navigation of the site, content, extra functions and the way the site works!

The site will now be easier to use and move between pages while retaining all the things that make House Price Spy a market leader such as gargon free property information, easy stats and simple comparision features.

There are a few new functions which add to many things you can do with the data we provide, the Sat Nav function allows you to compare streets and areas without saving them for just a temporary search. Get to the street or area you are interested in and click on the individual entries you want to compare, then click on ‘Stats’ at the top left of the screen, to create your Unique Property Report just select the streets/areas and we will do the rest!! There are now loads of things you can do with the information we provide, there are more helping hints on site but it should all be fairly self explanatory!

As you can see we have had a fancy new facelift, with a new logo and colourscheme, which will help us get a distinctive brand recognisable to all.

House Price Spy offers free unlimted property prices , statistics and information related to the property market and finance. We are a market leader with the best data available updated monthly, unique search structure and innovative functions to allow you to use the data! There are so many ways you can use the data, so many reasons for knowing what your property is worth! General interest, valuations, insurance and millions more!!!

See the changes and start using the new funstions at House Price Spy!!!