How to estimate your home's value from sold prices
The most useful starting point for working out what a home is worth is what similar homes nearby have actually sold for. Estate agents, surveyors and buyers all start in the same place: recent completed sales of comparable homes, often called comparables.
You can do a rough version of this yourself with HM Land Registry sold prices. It will not give you an exact figure, but it will give you a sensible range and help you judge the figures that agents and buyers put in front of you.
This guide covers picking comparables, adjusting for differences, the limits of sold data and when to get a professional opinion.
Start with comparable sales
A comparable is a recent sale of a home that is as close as possible to yours in location, type, size and condition. The closer the match, the more weight it deserves.
Sold prices are better than asking prices for this. An asking price is what a seller hopes to get. A sold price is what a buyer actually paid, recorded when the sale is registered with HM Land Registry. See asking price vs sold price for why the two often differ.
Aim for three to six good comparables rather than one perfect one. A single sale can be unusual for reasons you cannot see, such as a quick sale between relatives or a home in very poor repair.
Same street, same type, recent
Look first at your own street, then at the streets around it. Two homes a few minutes apart can sell for quite different prices if one street is quieter, closer to a station or in a different school catchment.
Match the property type. Land Registry records each sale as detached, semi-detached, terraced, or flat or maisonette. A terraced house is a poor guide to a semi-detached one, and a flat is a poor guide to a house, even on the same road. The records also show whether the home was freehold or leasehold and whether it was a new build. New builds often sell at a premium, so treat them carefully when your home is not new.
Favour recent sales. Prices move over time, so a sale from three years ago needs adjusting before you can use it. Within the last 12 months is a good target. In a quiet street you may need to go back further or widen the search to nearby streets. Remember that the newest sales take two to eight weeks to be registered, so the most recent month will look thin. Why sold prices take months to appear explains the delay.
Checklist
- Find three to six recent sales of the same property type
- Start with your own street, then widen to nearby streets
- Prefer sales from the last 12 months
- Check tenure and whether any sale was a new build
- Compare price per square metre using floor areas
- Adjust for condition, extensions, parking and garden
- Get agent appraisals before you set an asking price
Adjusting for size and condition
Land Registry data records the price, date, address, property type, tenure and new build flag. It does not record floor area, number of bedrooms, condition, parking or garden size. You need to fill in those gaps yourself.
For size, the floor area on a home's energy performance certificate is a useful guide, and old sales listings often show floor plans. Comparing price per square metre lets you compare homes of different sizes on the same footing.
As an illustrative example with round numbers: a similar terraced house two doors away sold for £400,000 and has a floor area of 100 square metres, which is £4,000 per square metre. If your home is 90 square metres, the same rate gives £360,000. If the other house had a new kitchen and bathroom and yours needs work, you would expect your figure to sit lower again. These numbers are made up to show the method, not a guide to any real area.
Then allow for anything buyers pay more or less for locally: an extra bedroom, a loft conversion, off-street parking, a garden facing the right way, a busy road outside, or a short lease on a flat.
What sold data can't tell you
A sold price shows what was paid, not why. It does not tell you whether the home was in good order, whether the buyer was in a hurry, or whether the price was renegotiated after a survey.
It also cannot tell you what the market will do next. Recent sales describe the past few months. If prices in the area are rising or falling, your figure needs to reflect that, which you can judge from how the median moves over time. Working out house price change shows how.
Some sales are left out of the data altogether, such as transfers that were not for value and discounted right to buy sales. What Land Registry price data includes covers what is in and out.
When to get a valuation from an agent or surveyor
Your own estimate is a good way to prepare, but it is not a valuation. When money depends on the figure, get a professional view.
If you are thinking of selling, ask two or three local estate agents for a market appraisal. Most do this free. They know which homes are under offer now and what buyers are asking for, which sold data cannot show. Use your comparables to question any figure that looks out of line.
If you are buying, your mortgage lender will arrange its own valuation for lending purposes. A survey from a RICS surveyor looks at the condition of the home and can include a valuation. For a divorce, probate, tax or a dispute, you usually need a formal valuation from a RICS registered valuer.
Prices for your postcode
The postcode district and street pages on House Price Monitor are free to read and show median sold prices from Land Registry data. Start from the postcode list.
The full monthly report for a postcode district lists every sale, with addresses, and costs £4.99 a month, with the first report free on sign-up. See pricing. Estate agents and brokers can use the professional plan, which includes valuation packs of comparable sales.
House Price Monitor reports completed sales. It does not value homes or predict prices.
Other guides
How to find what a house sold for
How to work out how much house prices have changed
Comparing house prices between streets and postcodes