How much is my house worth
There are a lot of ways you can find out “how much is my house worth” although until you sell it it will always be an estimate. The best way to find the closest match is by using land registry data which is a guaranteed sold price and not via third parties e.g. listing asking price vs sold house prices achieved. We wanted to create a complete guide with as many ways to find out: “how much is my house worth”.
If you wanted to fast forward to see a particular companies valuation tool just click their name from the list:
RightMove
Zoopla
OnTheMarket
Land Registry
Net House Prices
Mouseprice Valuation
Property Price advice
Our Property
The Move Market
Acadata House Prices
Property Data
HBF Property Earnings Calculator
Conclusion
Rightmove
Founded in 2000 Rightmove has become one of the largest and most popular property portals. If you wanted to know how to find sold house prices in an area firstly you’ll want to go to the Right Move Sold prices tool
It should look like this –
Enter in a postcode or area and you’ll get a page with a list of all the properties in that location e.g. street. There will be a list of the last price they were listed on the platform as well as old photos of the property and floor plans etc. if they were available.
You can also filter the properties to find a closer match to your own or the house you’re looking to compare with. Finally on the right side will be a list of local estate agents you can contact if you wanted them to carry out a valuation though you can also do this independent of the portal.
What to look for?
It can sometimes be overwhelming to see all the data in one location and isn’t as simple as you may hope. You’ll want to check for a property that is as close to yours as possible so this will include size from square footage to the number of bedrooms. The type of property e.g. flats vs houses can be a large difference between the two types even if they were both e.g. 2 bedrooms.
The EPC (Energy Performance Certificates) rating, you can find the EPC rating via the government’s website. By 2025 an EPC of ‘C’will be required for homes so it’s worth ensuring you look for a better EPC.
You are only looking at the estimated value here so don’t worry if you don’t find the same property match, you can also look at current ‘for sale’ properties if you cannot find much in the sold house prices. Don’t forget to look for STC or ‘sold subject to contract’ which are listed as sold but the sale is yet to be fully complete, we’ve written a blog post about this for more info.
Zoopla
The second in line after Rightmove, Zoopla has a large section of data and regularly releases reports covering things like market trends & house price trends.
The tool is fairly intuitive you just need to enter the postcode or street into their tool –
You’ll be able to look at how many properties were sold in the last 12 months for the area you’ve searched and their average sold price. Below this and the filters, you can see recent sales and a bit more details but it’s worth noting these sales are only via the platform so won’t be a complete summary. If you create an account Zoopla will try to give an instant valuation but this is only an estimated value. Zoopla will give a level of confidence for their price too and use the following to help give a price:
- Official survey records from accredited surveyors
- Sold house price data from HM Land Registry and Registers of Scotland
- Energy performance certificates (EPCs)
- Live for sale and to rent property listings
- Address data from Royal Mail and Ordnance Survey
Coming in third place in the property portals is Onthemarket with its online valuation tool unfortunately they get an F for using propertypriceadvice.co.uk to power their tool and connect other users with an estate agent so really their tool doesn’t do anything! Use it at your own risk!
Land Registry Data
We’ve spoken a bit already about land registry data and you might’ve heard of it too but what exactly is it?
The HM Land Registry is the government’s data of sold house prices. It was created/founded in 1862 so it’s been going a while! It is also what gives insights into such reports and the ONS (Office of National Statistics) House Price Index so, it’s a really good source for finding sold price data and the actual value of the property when it was sold.
When you complete a house sale and all the paperwork is complete the info is stored. You can access the data (completely free) via the governments ‘search sold house prices’ tool and you should get to a menu that looks like the following –
simply enter in your search criteria and you’ll get back the property transactions for the details you’ve entered e.g. street and city.
The info is comprehensive but there are a few exceptions that may not give the whole picture e.g.
- If the sale is not logged with HM Land Registry or is held up after being sold
- Some types of sales are not correctly listed like repossessions or court orders, auctions and cash buyers like us.
- Discounted properties under schemes like Right to Buy
- Any property subject to an existing mortgage
- Any shares of property for sample transferring between people after a divorce
- If a property is gifted
- Vesting Deeds Transmissions or Assets of more than one proper (someone died)
Net House Prices
nethouseprices.com founded in 2004 and purchased to be part of the one Dome group is another option but it uses data from HM Land Registry so you might find the user interface more appealing but you wouldn’t find any further data. Free valuations are a way to connect you with estate agents.
Enter your location to get the results in area or postcode.
Mouseprice Valuation
Mouse price has a valuation tool as well. Formed in 2004 similar to another online valuation tool. There is a ‘pro’ version though you can access most basic things via the free version and data will be the same as via HM land registry just with a nice interface. You can look at previous property prices and average prices. As the tool does tend to average everything out you might not get the most accurate measurement.
Visual of what to expect, just enter your full postcode or street.
Running since 2005 the property price advice tool, advises itself as impartial, however, the free online tools it provides are connected with HM Land Registry sold prices (again!) and also unfortunately give your data to estate agents who would actually be doing the valuation outside the sold price lookup. This can be helpful for getting a free quote through the same information can also be gleaned from other sources.
when entering your postcode select the ‘sold house prices to see the gov’s data or ‘free valuation’ to be put in touch with expert estate agents.
No, we don’t mean our as-in HouseBuyFast we mean the company ourproperty.co.uk (though you can use us!). This tool uses HM Land Registry data to create its data unfortunately see any data you will need an account but if you wanted to you’ll just need to look up your postcode or street via the tool
You can see a sale history in the tool and some property details but it’s not the most accurate tool we’ve come across.
The Move Market is a newer tool but brings some great extra features to the game. Whilst is still using the government’s data it also adds some nice extra flourishes like:
- refurb costs
- sale history
- est size
- number of bedrooms
- return on investment
- est build date
- property rating
It will also try to give an estimate and It puts the data to a bit more work than some of the other tools we have listed. IT also lays out the data in some visually pleasing way especially the property price over time charts.
We did come across some bugs at the time of writing this where the pages were not fully loading. You could take care to only look at the costs like renovation and return on investment as estimates only as there will be no way to know if those costs are true but it’s a nice touch.
You can preview London here
Acadata advertises itself as an “Independent research-based consultancy” and thus tries to be a bit more academic in its approach to a house price calculator. Whilst they again use the land registry data they also add an inflation calculator to then help work out the price of a property compared to when it was purchased. It doesn’t take in many factors from the property listing like the number of bedrooms or other facts from other properties in the area so it will be a very rough estimate but we applaud the use of inflation to better add a sense to a price though recent property price increased have gone beyond even inflation.
Property data isn’t a free tool but there is a free trial so we’ve listed this in case you wanted to try that and it’s good to have a comprehensive guide to all the best house valuation tools. advertising itself as a tool for professionals there is data for Research, Source and Evaluate. These are then further split down into subsections to help drill down and hopefully get a more accurate valuation. The power of a paid tool is they have a lot more sources for their data and will probably give the most accurate online valuations out of the tools we have listed.
HouseBuyFast (us!) created the PEC tool. This tool was created to show the price value increase of an average property in locales across the UK but you can still use it to help.
The results will show you the profit of the property (as well as how much the house is worth in that area) and also convert this into profit over hours, days, and months too. This can be a helpful tool to find if an area is profitable that you may be looking to move into or out of.
Remember you can also use cash buying companies (like HouseBuyFast) to help with valuations but their valuations will normally be below the local market rate due to how they work. They are no obligation and will have no fees so it can be worth a shot!
Conclusion
There are many tools available to help get your home valued as an estimated value. Most tools will use the government’s own data from the land registry and others will add their own twist to the data.
Details are important to gain an accurate measure so make sure you get your home details correct ad ensure any other factors that could affect the price are factored into your estimated value. This might be proximity to rail lines or planning permissions on home improvements You won’t truly know how much your property is worth until you list it on the housing market.