This site promises to give you an accurate estimate of what your home is worth. But does it work? Emma Lunn finds out.
Do you fancy finding out how much your house is worth? Tempted to make a speculative offer on the pad down the road that isn’t even on the market? Interested in finding out what your friends paid for their place?
If the answer’s ‘yes’ to any of these questions then zoopla.co.uk could be for you. Set up by the founder of DVD rental service LoveFilm, Zoopla claims to be the UK’s first community property website.
In my opinion, it’s a gift for voyeurs and property porn addicts everywhere, because Zoopla provides free, instant value estimates on more than 26 million homes –- in other words the UK’s entire housing stock.
What I like about it is that, unlike other property search engine sites, Zoopla lists details of all the properties in the UK rather than just those on the market. As well as checking out what their place is worth, users can set a TemptMe! Price which is the price they would consider selling for or make a TemptMe! Offer on any home listed on Zoopla.
Basically the site gathers information from public sources and groups it all together. From historical sales prices from the Land Registry, economic trends and property characteristics in any given area, a proprietary algorithm (secret formula) calculates how much your house it worth today.
How accurate is it?
Let’s put it to the test.
I recently went through the remortgage process, and my new mortgage lender had valued my flat in south London at £286,000. I consider this to be a pretty accurate estimate – after all, unlike estate agents, it’s not in a lender’s interest to bump it up a bit.
But Zoopla says otherwise. After I’d typed in my postcode and located my flat, the site said it was worth a paltry £205,000. It also claimed the value was down £7,442 from a year ago but up £11,289 from two years ago.
£81,000 is a pretty big discrepancy in my opinion. As I live in a block of six flats which is one of four blocks making up an estate, I thought I’d check what my 23 neighbours’ – whose properties are pretty much identical to mine – are worth. The results are a bit confusing. Despite Zoopla basing its figures on previous sale prices and local information, identical flats on my estate ranged in value from £187,500 to £245,000.
However, once users have ‘claimed’ their home it’s possible to add details to the site to get a more accurate estimate. I claimed my flat as my own and added details about the number of rooms, decorative state, heating, parking and outside space. Yet, the value of my beloved abode was only bumped up to £220,851, still more than £60,000 short of the recent lender’s valuation.
So how can my place be worth less than both the maximum value of identical flats and my recent valuation? I had a new bathroom put in last year for God’s sake, and the whole place has been transformed from the dump it was when I moved in, to the trendy bachelorette pad it is now.
Zoopla itself says it relies on users inputting details to give more accurate valuations but despite doing so, my flat is still shown at a less than 80% of its true value.
So what are other people’s experiences? Has Zoopla got it right and I should simply face the fact that my flat is worth less than I like to think? Or are web valuations such as this not to be relied upon?
More: The Truth About House Prices | I Want A House Price Crash!
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