Are You Confused By House Price Surveys?

If you are confused by house price surveys and sell house fast, then you are not alone. Many people we meet each day in the course of our business don’t know which one to believe. It appears that each one seems to say the opposite to the last.

This is why we at An Instant Sale have taken a look at house price surveys to see how they work and find out which ones you can trust. The Land Registry is the most recent survey to be launched and is the most reliable.

The Land Registry has been recording property and land sales since April 2000 and as well as their quarterly survey, they now publish a monthly report on property prices. Their survey is comprehensive and compares the price of houses and land sold now with the selling price of the previous sale. This can provide a truthful picture of the price of properties down to a postcode level.

However as this survey is only published quarterly and bearing in mind how volatile the housing market is at the moment, the figures are often out of date at the time of publishing.

The government also issues a monthly property price index after gathering information from fifty mortgage lenders but this does not include information on cash purchases, so discounts a quarter of the market. This survey usually is two months in arrears so again is not totally reliable in today’s housing market.

The government survey indexes according to expenditure, which means that areas where homes cost the most, like the South East and London will greatly influence the governments index.

Surveys by the Halifax and Nationwide cover all of the UK and often their figures are alike, but these again are only based on house sales financed by mortgages and discount cash sales.

The survey composed by The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) mirrors confidence in the housing market rather than the reality of house prices.

There are also property websites that produce their own property price surveys and can be a fairly useful guide to current house prices, as the data is extracted from numerous estate agents offices.

Probably the easiest way to dispel your confusion is to phone the An Instant Sale freephone number and one of our representatives will explain this in more detail.

If you would like more information on how you can sell your home quickly or sell and rent back - fill in the online form or phone us now.