house prices drop 10% in 4 months..

Not a chance. What you forgot is that each of those factors has a different value to each buyer, from zero to very high (and quite likely different between couples buying) ,and there are many more factors than you mention) Then, you have to add in the buyers circumstances, plus the competitive position.

Or what about the Land Registry making all their statistics public? IIRC you can get an average price for the first half of your postcode, but the second half would remove a lot of the guesswork. Invasion of privacy issues no doubt.

"stuart noble"

In message , MM writes

There is no such system for most other things, so why should there be for houses. One way would be to have a paid for professional valuation by a Chartered Surveyor, but I have had these carried out, and subsequently sold houses for much more, (or much less), shortly afterwards.

In fact, I think you would find that sellers would not want to be told how much their house is worth according to a scientific yardstick - they would much prefer to believe it is worth more, until proved otherwise.

In message , stuart noble

Most if not all of these criteria *can* be quantified, based on a sample of test data. Most young couples, for example, will have similar - not identical - aims. Most elderly people know there will come a time when stair climbing becomes impossible. Most growing families need plenty of space. In fact, even when it comes down to esoterica like 'nice view', 'pleasant area', all of which are in the eye of the beholder, most people recognise the Lake District as rugged or the Cotswolds as pastoral. Don't forget I'm only looking for a 'ballpark' valuation initially, which of course the agent can discuss with the vendor to come to a final valuation.

MM

Because houses are unique. You can buy almost anything else and it is not the same as selling the roof over your head and buying another. When you buy almost anything other than a house, you are just adding to or replacing some of your possessions, whether it be a new car or a tin of baked beans, neither of which is essential (you could probably get by for a week without the beans, and indefinitely without the car). A house on the other hand is like pregnancy: Either you have a house/are pregnant, or you have/are not. If you don't have a house, where are you going to live? Without a car, it might be a bit strange using the bus, or walking. But not impossible. I don't believe one can think of any item to buy that even approximates to a house and all that entails.

Nevertheless, with 'most other things' you can shop around and choose at your leisure. Not so with a house. You can't ring up an agent and say, I'll buy that house, er, no I won't, I'll buy this one! Oh, wait a mo, I'll just pop across the road and see if they do any cheaper ones. If there were ten times the housing stock to go around than we actually need, that might indeed be the case, but it isn't the case. Houses are in extremely short supply, which is why the prices keep going up. The way we sell and buy houses is entirely different to anything else we have to fork out for. Even if you don't pay your electricity or gas bill on time, you are unlikely to be thrown on to the streets any time soon. You can buy a holiday, then have an unfortunate fortnight in Costa del Titsout while the hotel next to yours is still being built. Not the end of the world, though. But end up without a house and there's a strong possibility that your partner will leave and the children will be taken into care. That's why I believe that house buying and selling needs to be placed on a far more scientific basis than relying on the whims of estate agents, all of whom are continually trying to talk up the market in order to maximise their commission.

MM

Thanks. It wasn't earlier this year, at least not on their website.

There's no method of valuing anything except by discovering what others will pay for it in a free trade. The idea that there is some "true" or inherent value apart from this is a nonsense.

FoFP

The true value of a ton of gold is what someone will give you, or do for you, for that ton of gold. No more and no less.

FoFP

But if you received the ballpark valuation which was based on documented methodology, you would have a yardstick by which to compare your proposed asking price with the kinds of asking prices being demanded elsewhere. For example, take a simple thing like floor space and disregard all other criteria: If a dwelling has y amount of floor space and another dwelling has 2y amount, then you'd expect the asking price of the latter to reflect the doubling of space. Therefore, just knowing the floor space would be more information than is currently the norm, unless you go to the bother of working it out from the room dimensions and expecting all other vendors to do the same. On the continent it is common practice to state the total floor space and the plot size. These items are beginning to be adopted in the UK, but only for new build as far as I can tell after receiving literally hundreds of property brochures.

From the latter it is usually impossible to gauge, for example, how big the garden(s) are, especially as many agents do not publish photos of them. How many thousands of hours and concomitant costs are wasted each year by buyers visiting properties only to find that certain salient details have been omitted or inaccurately represented?

Given that having more scientifically derived information to hand must always help to provide greater, not lesser, accuracy in whatever the particular field in which it is applied, why would the sale of property be any different?

MM

But there's no straightforward relationship, you're not buying so many sqare feet you're buying a home. The doubling of space inside the house won't outweigh actors like location, access, state of repair and so on.

Yes, but that is the result of the area not being commonly shown.

Once you start house hunting in France (for example) you soon learn the sort of area of house you are looking for and can immediately use that as one of the search criteria.

It's very common to highlight the area of the property in some countries. It's the norm in UK commercial property. However, those countries have also experienced ballooning property prices so whilst it doesn't temper the speculative investment it's probably useful when house builders promote the value of 'low cost starter' homes, which are, in essence, just very small houses.

That said, given that many houses being built in the UK are barely large enough to install a bed and am hopeful that this will be a temporary trend.

The enormous majority of brochures/schedules/particulars I've seen recently give room measurements and many offer a plan. Is it beyond the capability of potential purchasers, about to enter into a frankly massive transaction, to do a few sums, if area matters? Measurements of rooms, particularly when it comes to fitting in items of furniture, are far more useful than a single area figure.

It's not the *only* criterion but it may well be a limiting one. E.g. we have set a minimum area of something like 200 sq meters, anything less than that is simply too small for our requirements. We then move on to other things.

In message , Sam Nelson writes

I think the fact is that most people dont realise that square footage is a figure which features in their buying decision, and therefore dont even think to calculate it.

However, in selling houses, every now and then, I would calculate the £/sq.ft. selling prices of properties sold, and it was always quite surprising that there was a correlation between price and sq. Footage. This would suggest that with most buyers, it is actually a subconscious action which takes it into account. Clearly, location, type and specification also feature.

Having said that, if i ever discussed £/sq. Foot comparisons with a potential seller, it was very rare that they would accept that their house was not worth much more, and I generally lost the business to another agent who did not discuss £/sq.ft., suggested a figure they wanted to hear, and then reduced the price gradually to the "correct" figure, or the market rose, and it sold for the new "correct" figure.

I did say, disregard all other criteria for the purposes of this example.

However, I firmly believe that most people share common ideas about what is considered a nice location or a nasty one. For example, Cheltenham is generally considered to be genteel, select and desirable, whereas Reading ain't. Within each location there will be good, bad and indifferent areas, so that the good parts of Reading will be favourably compared with the middling to good parts of Cheltenham. Live in an area for a while and the neighbours will say, ah, don't even think of moving into the Chavhampton area! Slowly, over time, you build a mental picture of where the good and bad locations are. However, a simple score would ease the process.

The same goes, too, for state of repair. Hardly any person could look at two buildings, one in pristine condition and the other decidedly not, without being able to tell the difference. Every car owner can recognise a scratch along the car door! Again, a score would help to pinpoint the type of property in the buyer's mind before making possibly extensive trips away from home. I have been caught out at least three times by lack of information in the property brochures. One in particular was, in my opinion, blatantly deceptive, fraudulent even. It made the property look ten times what it was actually worth on closer on-site inspection. A wide angle and a telephoto lens can turn many properties from a barn into a palace. I drove a couple of hundred miles to find this out in the one instance!

MM

Interesting that people put entirely different monetary values on the state of repair/disrepair though (as you can see any week on 'Location,location' ) some almost view shabby out-of-date decor as a positive advantage, 'something where we can add value'.