A VERY useful list of websites

A few weeks ago I posted the beginnings of a list of useful websites ... (and no, I don't mean Next Directory or Facebook)...I'm talking about property related ones. The very forward-thinking guys at Progressive Property have done me a great favour and produced a list of their own which I have reproduced here for your reading pleasure!

Sold Prices
Simply enter a post-code in the above & see what properties sold and for what, and you can even narrow the search by house age, style and see a map.
www.nethouseprices.com

Similar to the above, but instead gives coloured-coded Google maps which highlights the streets that fetch the most. Great for 'getting the spread' & finding cheap properties on good streets.
www.houseprices.co.uk

Most on-line portals go back as far as 2000-ish but Ourproperty stretches back to 1995. It's free but you need to register.
www.ourproperty.co.uk

Match Sold Prices to Property Ads

Zoopla's powerful tool matches up sold prices with old property ads, including photos, description & asking prices. Hit the Values section, search for an area & click the red H's for historic listings.
www.zoopla.co.uk

Search for a price comp report on RM to see sold prices & details of how many beds. You may be able to unearth the full listings by Googling the road name, as many sites scrape RM's data & leave it up for years.
www.rightmove.com

Want to get an overview of your goldmine area?
The following tools will help show you how many properties are changing hands in your area & how much for.
Land registry [LR]
LR collects official house price data on real sales, recording every residence sold. It's HPI gives average prices by country & region, breaking them down into different property types. Be careful as the data is three months out of date, but a very useful tool.
You can download national and regional price data for different property types since 1952, as well as more detailed analysis.

Ballpark house price valuations
There are several free online tools to value a property. Mark says they can be a long way off; for official valuations, speak with agents & use LR sold prices.
Zoopla – for a bespoke valuation Type in a post-code & it will give you a rough indication of sales prices for that area. Select a property in a street & get a bespoke online valuation based on previous sales & market climate.

For a more detailed second opinion Slightly quicker & easier to work through & asks fewer questions. You can get an upper & lower valuation for a given property, but Mark say's PPA is more likely to over-value properties.
www.propertypriceadvice.co.uk

Want an estimated price range? This simply asks for your postcode & no of bedrooms so it is hardly a conclusive study! A nice addition is Google Earth snap of the property. You can pay for a detailed valuation, but as the accuracy is still questionable, stick with the freebies!
www.mouseprice.com

Nationwide – Find a home's value based on its sale price This tool is designed for people to put in their property's price when they bought it & work out what it's worth now. This tool is useful in it can give an idea of how house price fluctuations affect value. BTW Mark says "Take the results with a shovel of salt. Don't just rely on the figures given – treat it as a fun investigation, nothing more."
www.nationwide.co.uk

Monitor house price trends
Housepricecrash -Get a feel on housing market forecasts
Check out what the pundits predict. This site has a pro-property agenda. It collects stats from LR, the Financial Times & Hometrack to number crunch house price trends.

Find local asking prices
Rightmove [RM]
The godfather of home sites -RM is the best place to compare homes on the market. With a plethora of props up for grabs, it plots listings on Google map for ease 

For best results, turbo charge RM with Property-bee, which is an ingenious Firefox add-on, [on steroids] to see how sellers have altered listings & dropped prices.

This site includes reams of data alongside the listings, including how the asking price compares with others in the town & postcode.
A great way to compare gross yields. It also allows you to click on homes' 'price histories' to see how the asking price has shifted.
www.home.co.uk

Monitor house prices on the go
Rightmove
Iphone App This uses GPS technology to pinpoint houses for sale & even where you are standing. Click 'get my current location' & it shows a list of pads up for grabs! Finding the spread just got easier 
Search Rightmove in an APP search

Uncover Rightmove ads' secret histories
This free add on for web browser Firefox is super-fast! It works with property listings on RM to show you how sellers alter their listings, crucially, price cuts. It allows you to see when the seller put the property up for sale; each time they cut the price & by how much; & if it was taken off the market & put back on. These are all useful bargaining chips in purchase negotiations.
www.property-bee.com

Monitor dropped asking prices
This shows which properties in an area have recently dropped their asking prices & by how much. Simply type in a postcode to see who's have having trouble offloading their house & what percentage they've trimmed the price by.
www.propertysnake.co.uk

Look for repo'd properties
Ei Group
It is very possible to pick up a repo or distressed-sale properties at up to 30% below market value. For those willing to put in the work on research & repairs, these can most certainly, represent some of the best buys on the market.