House Price Spy Blog

I see there was a property related article on the BBC site, which had an estate agent who offered house swop where you can trade your home for another one and ‘match make’ buyers to sellers like a property dating agency. A few months ago developers were potential housebyers to try new build houses for a weekend to see whether they were suitable or not. Both of these are preferable to the governments announcement of this week that they were going to spend billions of taxpayers money in raising the minimum level of 1% Stamp Duty to £175 rather than the previous £125.

See the whole clip at the BBC site

From the stats we have the average price in England is £230,000, which is the same as last year. The recent government action will give an average sale an extra £550 but average prices should have risen by from £10,000 to over £20,000 during the last year so this a drop in the ocean.

Last year - £230,000 - £125,000= £105,000×1%=£1050

This year - £230,000 - £175,000= £55,000×1%=£550

£550 is not enough to get the property market going, but by the governments figures will cost us billions. By my figures (and bear with me here):

There are an average 100,000 sales in the whole of the UK per month so 100,000×12 monthsx£550 Stamp Duty=£660,000,000 (£0.66 Billion) to give a tiny £500 help! How many council houses could you build for that Gordon?

Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have made a move to quell the recent unrest about house prices and the apparently impending recession by giving every seller a year long boost. The previous lowest level where you paid Stamp Duty 1% Tax was £125,00, this has now been raised to £175,000. This will last for 1 year from Wednesday 3rd 2008.

Also announced today were measures to help people struggling with large mortgages with increased rates of interest by giving councils and Social Housing Landlords the power to pay off mortages while charging reasonable rents. This money will be found from previous funding and ‘brought forward’ to improve housing in the short term.

Conservatives and Liberals have condemned these measures as short-term solutions and as an attempt to save Gordon Brown from Election defeat or being ousted by his own party.

With the cost of living rising and the global economy facing the worst slump in 20 years, its unclear what Brown could do, the UK property market has been inflated for most of the 21st century and many people are seeing this as a sensible re-adjustment rather than a collapse in prices. People buying in popular areas will never lose much, however builders and speculators may lose out in the medium term.

Where will Gordon Brown be finding the money to pay for this? Millions of pounds will have to be found from somewhere, since someone like me (who bought property last year) wont be moving in the near future I am not keen to fund others just to boost the number of properties sold and artificially raise prices. The government also announced that households earning under £60,000 will get ‘interest free’ loans to fund property.

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.

The latest property figures have confirmed what we all know, sales are down to pre-1990 levels and desposits are up to an average of £37,000. Mortgage lending is down by 65% on figures for July 2007.

This is not of course great for first time buyers and those on low incomes who are already on the property ladder, usually you would have said that the government would offer support to get more people back buying property and spending money but with the present financial crisis you wont hold your breath! The London Olympic bid will be a huge expense and I am sure there are quite a few world leaders relieved to have that multi billion pound burden to bear in the next few, lean, years.

Another point made by the BBA was that reposssesions in ’sub-prime’ mortgages was up, lenders have raised their rates on these types of mortgages and few companies are now offering them. Government action would be appreciated on this point, lenders offering mortgages which are out of scale with earnings and then removing them when times get hard leaving homeowners with nowhere to go as other lenders have had the same thoughts. Attracting borrowers in with low rates and 100% mortgages and then going back on their pledge when the financial outlook changed!

All figures from the BBA or British Bankers Association.

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

I saw an article in the papers today saying Scottish leader Alex Salmond claimed that Scottish house prices were up and some from a leading estate agents counter-claiming that they had gone down, from the figures we have it’s quite conclusive that they HAVE gone up. Number of sales is of course way down on 2007, that is why estate agents are all doom and gloom.

The average first time buyer in Scotland had a 3% larger deposit than the previous year at 13%, however there were a third less mortgages granted to first time buyers than this time last year.

Below are areas in Scotland with a rise in average house prices (prices rounded down):

Aberdeen City - July 2007 £178k - Jun 2008 £185k

Aberdeenshire - July 2007 £187k - Jun 2008 £188k

Argyll And Bute - July 2007 £162k - Jun 2008 £179k

East Ayrshire - July 2007 £114k - Jun 2008 £131k

East Dunbartonshire - July 2007 £189k - Jun 2008 £214k

Highland - July 2007 £154k - Jun 2008 £189k

Orkney Islands - July 2007 £235k - Jun 2008 £294k

Perth and Kinross - July 2007 £173k - Jun 2008 £193k

South Lanarkshire - July 2007 £135k - Jun 2008 £139k

West Dumbartonshire - July 2007 £108k - Jun 2008 £110k

These are obviously averages from all the data however you may see a localised drop in prices where you are.

The figures for Scotland in 2008 are January £151k and June £159k so Mr Salmond could argue that while England was down by an average of £8K in that period Scotland was doing better that the rest of mainland UK

Check on your local area to see whether your area has gone up or down, House Price Spy is free and gives you all the property information you need to keep an eye on the market locally or nationally. Help to spread the word about our great free service, tell your family and friends to join up for free!!

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!!!