Accurately valuing a property is a bit of an art form, as our own guide to valuing your own property goes into in some depth. If you want to get a rough estimate, an online house valuation is a good way to go. However, rather than just give you a list of websites where you can value your property, we thought we’d go one better: we found a tame writer who was willing to get his property valued, we sent in one of our own property experts, and then we compared the results.
Our ‘Tester’ Property
The property is a two-bedroom terraced house in the middle of Devon, specifically a listed building that benefits from good views of the river. While it’s not in the wealthiest area in Devon, it is well located near most amenities, and benefits from no through traffic as it’s down a well-lit path. It doesn’t have parking, which knocks off a substantial amount of value, but it has been recently renovated. It was originally bought at auction as a repossession for £90,000, and it was gutted completely.
Yopa’s local agent in the area valued this property at £145,000, so let’s see how the online tools fared…
Property Price Advice
Property Price Advice is an independent website with one of the best house price calculators out there. The questions it asks are designed to provide a more accurate price for your property, although it’s less easy to use than those that just ask for your postcode and property number. However, it’s still surprisingly intuitive.
It produced a value of £122,500, which is lower than the Yopa valuation. It did not provide a rental valuation.
The result seems to be roughly based onthe previous selling price. However, it’s added a premium of some sort, as it recognises that the previous selling price was much lower than the local average. It also produces the previous selling price and also gives a comprehensive explanation of the logic uses to calculate the price. It also produces a local average for all properties in the area with the same number of bedrooms, which could be used to value the property more accurately.
Zoopla Home Value Calculator
The Zoopla tool takes the last sale price, applies an appropriate increase, adds on the value of any improvements made, and spits out an answer. The tool itself is fairly straightforward, although the additional features section is rather small, and there’s no real logic to the order.
Taking all the improvements into account and accounting for the garden, the Zoopla estimate is £150,000, which is £5,000 over the Yopa estimate. It also estimates the rental value as £600 per month.
The tool is a little simplistic in places however, as if you claim you made £200,000 worth of improvements, it simply adds the value to the amount. It doesn’t take into account the maximum market value of the area, which is a shame – and surprising, considering it has so much information to hand. You also have to sign in to view the estimate.
Your Move
The valuation tool provided by Your Move takes the last known sales price and adds on an appropriate percentage. Again, it’s simple to use, and it also provides a number of broad statistics regarding the area. These statistics are broadly interesting, and they bring up a picture of the area, which appears to be based on the postcode and the neighbouring postcodes.
Because the tool only takes the last selling price of the house into account, it undervalues our test property massively at a maximum of £112,000 and a minimum of £92,000. To get the rental value, it asks for the same information, and it gave a very broad range of £300 to £492.
These figures are so broad as to be almost unusable in our case. If your property has had very little done to it, it might be suitable, but don’t expect accuracy if you have renovated the property or added an extension.
Nationwide House Price Index Calculator
This valuation tool is even more basic than the Your Move valuation tool, and it requires a previous valuation. It’s very simple to use, although the slider isn’t the most precise, and it essentially adds a percentage change onto the last known valuation. For these purposes, we put in the original selling price of the house and the valuation year.
As a result, it gave a value of £109,290. This equates to a change of 21.43%. It doesn’t give a rental value.
Again, this gives a significant undervaluation thanks to the previous selling price of the property. It’s good that you can select a property region, but the regions are so broad that it cannot take into account fluctuations in value between towns and cities. As an example, Hebburn in Tyne & Wear is 6% up on the year, whereas nearby South Shields is 5% down. This results in a big disparity even within the same area.
Mouseprice
Mouseprice is all about property valuations, and this tool was very simple to use, only requiring a postcode. You do have to login to get a valuation though.
Mouseprice predicted a value of £140,000, which is surprisingly close to the YOPA valuation. The value range, however, is extremely broad at £125,000-£155,000, and it believes that the rental value is around £610 a month.
The House Network
The House Network is a nationwide online estate agent which offers a valuation tool. It first asks you for your postcode and house number, as well as the number of bedrooms. There is also a rather irritating (and mandatory) “how did you find us” question; this bombards you with a list of possible options, and it was almost impossible to find “Google.” We ended up selecting “School Fete.” A few contact details, and it gave an answer.
It valued the house at £151,500, which is a little higher than the valuation given by YOPA. It doesn’t give a rental value.
The tool does seem to overvalue properties somewhat, as a quick check on recently sold properties and their prices within the last month show that the tool is often overly optimistic. However, it did give the valuation to sale price of the local agent: all the ones we saw were around 97%. Taking this figure into account would bring down the prices we saw very close to their actual value.
House Tree
House Tree is an estate agent with an unusual model: it aims to recoup house selling costs from its preferred providers, but of course you pay extra for those providers, so it works out as a relatively expensive way of doing business. It asks for the property address, your address and your contact details, as well as the number of beds.
It gave a valuation of between £148,000 and £157,000, which is a fairly broad range with an average of £153,000. It did not give a rental value.
Again, this seems somewhat high compared to the Yopa valuation, and it overvalued a number of recently sold properties tested with the tool. Like many, it cannot seem to handle reductions in price in an area.
Balgores Property Group
Another estate agent collecting names and addresses, Balgores Property Group takes the last known sales value and adds an appropriate mark-up.
It gives identical results to the Your Move calculator: £92,000 to £112,000 and with a rental value of £300 per calendar month to £492 per calendar month. This gives us reason to believe that it may be the same tool but with less supplementary information.
Again, these figures are so inaccurate that they are almost unusable, as they don’t take any of the improvements made to the house into account. As a result, they provide a woefully low price that doesn’t reflect the actual market conditions. Given that the house is a two-bedroom house in a moderately decent area, the tool should be able to flag up that the last selling price was unusually low and not representative of the area, yet it doesn’t.
London and Country
London and Country is another estate agent, and it offers a very easy-to-use price valuation tool. You simply enter your postcode, select the right address and it comes up with a value.
In this case, it produced a value of £140,000, which is again similar to the Yopa valuation. However, it offers a very wide range of £117,000 to £163,000, which is a large caveat. It doesn’t provide a rental price.
This valuation tool appears closely related to the Mouseprice tool, with identical values being arrived at for a large number of properties. However, because it doesn’t require signing in, it’s easier to use, although it’s a little slower. It also has the same limitations as the Mouseprice tool regarding falling property values. It also won’t give prices for properties outside the firm’s operating area.
Overall, there’s nothing quite like a formal valuation from someone who has experience valuing properties in the area. Book a free valuation with Yopa, and find out what your home is actually worth.
