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Written by rosalind renshaw

The Community and Local Government house price survey has shown that house prices fell 0.5% in the month to May, and now stand at £203,582.

The official index is based on mortgage data for completed transactions.

The Government’s other official index, the Land Registry, reported that house prices in May stood at £161,823.

The Land Registry also bases its data on completed transactions.

The Government has offered no explanation as to why one official survey
is at odds with the other to the tune of £42,000.

Meanwhile, a report from accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers has predicted that house prices will not return to their 2007 peak for another nine years.

Comments

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    Mr Hendry: Such a pity that the piece of incriminating evidence that forms the first post on this story is not as easily altered as the blog it was originally pasted from, innit? ;o)

    Whassup - Land Registry not like you claiming this COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE is actually them??

    Oh - and as for the "a five year future price forecast" you refer to - I see you now like to call it a "a five year future statistical price forecast". Nice. That one word makes ALL the difference...

    I can only add two words to sum up your whole sorry position:

    CAUGHT. OUT.

    • 17 July 2011 01:05 AM
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    Asking prices have dropped slightly in my area thats all i can say.....hardly noticeably though..

    • 13 July 2011 22:51 PM
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    This is all a complete waste of time.
    I'm Out!

    • 13 July 2011 17:27 PM
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    f*&k me he's back, not only is he back but he's back with a new clanger and yet another brain dead idea.
    Mr Hendry, Ive missed you.
    Hows retirement keeping you? Still bored?

    • 13 July 2011 16:22 PM
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    FTB Dan: Don't get sucked in, mate! Trust me...

    As you state, the site YOU refer to (note it is a different site to the one Hendry is flogging...) offers such 'Valuation' Reports. Did you note also the following:

    "This report is provided for information purposes only. You are advised to seek independent advice when buying or selling a property."

    Thirty quid FOR INFO ONLY! Think about it... :o|

    • 13 July 2011 13:53 PM
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    Realising Your Goose is Cooked: The site you draw people to is NOT the Land Registry!

    Readers - the ONLY OFFICIAL SITE is http://www.landreg.gov.uk/

    With regard to the most outrageous part of Mr Hendry's post - NO WAY will LandReg give a "five year future price forecast" of a property value!!

    Who says? - Land Registry, that's who - I've just spoken to them...

    • 13 July 2011 13:44 PM
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    Posting here is plain daft, anyone who actually works in the business knows that any automated report, from any souce is worthless.

    Certain self intereted groups would love it if it were, be it just is not. There is no debate to be had, facts beat any self interest or those who are just ignorant of the process.

    • 13 July 2011 12:52 PM
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    When I grow up I’m starting a web site to give ‘official’ pricing figures for buying an selling cows. No longer will farmers and meat wholesalers need to run the gauntlet of going to ‘market’ to find where the price settles, My web site will fix the price for them. 3 legged cows will be cheaper than 4 legged cows and fat cows will be more expensive than thin cows. My idea will take the worry away from farmers and buyers alike. They will no longer need their years of farming experience to figure what a particular cow might be worth. A nicely printed report will tell them. Reports will be available online for a fiver.

    The bebefits? On the one side, don’t ask more than X selling price for this cow, and on the other, don’t pay more than X for the same cow.......this idea has legs, www.cowpriceofficialregistry.cow

    Once I have that done, I am moving onto FISH prices, then FRUIT and VEG prices, oh my lord! This could be big business..

    I need some venture capital.

    • 13 July 2011 12:45 PM
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    http://landregistryservice.co.uk/index.php?page=service&act=list&country=1#service_38

    Go down to Instant Valuation Report, and click ‘sample’, if you as agents could print off one of those of a few quid to attend a valuation surely you would, it would save you some work and it looks authentic enough.

    Don’t knock the guy for being a bit entrepreneurial, I think his pricing is still a little high, and he needs to get tie-ups with the portals, and sell into the corporate EAs (maybe the odd independent) but I think he has an interesting business. With either my Venture Capitalist or FTB’er hat on I would certainly not dismiss the bloke.

    • 13 July 2011 11:59 AM
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    I like RR’s report. And if I was about to drop £350k on a property I would probably be willing to spend £30 on a good looking report that could well help a vendor realise that I was not ‘chancing my arm’ because I am offering less than they paid in 2007, but that the offer is real.

    This is especially helpful in these times of low volumes, where a vendor has not been disabused of his notion that his house is worth X, because in the 4 months it has sat on the market no one has offered anything.

    That said, I did not see anything in that report that I could not have done myself. But is the fact it looks professional and independent; is that worth £30, perhaps yes. The big win for this firm will be when you can order them through Rightmove for £9.95. I expect RM will want about 7/8 quid of that, but for RR and his company it would be like a license to print money taking a pound or two a pop for what is essentially a HTML lookup script and database merge.

    • 13 July 2011 11:46 AM
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    @ Realising Reaity

    You are a bit late on this. Zoopla have been doing the same thing for the past year. From conversations with vendors and purchasers, they use the zoopla price when it suits, when it doesn't suit they appropriately ignore the findings or dismiss them as inaccurate using a variety of reasons. 'the noisy neighbours have now moved out', 'ive spent 30k on a new kitchen' , 'We got rid of the smell' etc etc etc

    • 13 July 2011 11:18 AM
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    How does the Land Registry know next door has just been converted to a half-way house or 20 travellers have set up site, so your property is unsalable now?? Ask the poor folk of Cottenham, Cambs. Nothing racist,just fact.

    Nonsense, no remote valuation tool works. they can only work on a % change in a post code or other mythical calculation that is totally inaccurate, no matter how much certain ignorant folk would love them to be right.

    Want any proof, check out the posts when any House price survey is released. It just does not work.

    • 13 July 2011 11:06 AM
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    I'll play ball. Are you suggesting that I pay £30, to get an "official" valuation on a house I already know the value of, and a report which a vendor will just ignored anyway?

    I go to every single valuation, fully armed with recent comparables, local completion price data which is found free on several websites and a head full of local knowledge build up from a decade in the local market. I doubt that an "official" report would make the slightest bit of difference. I also doubt the vendor will be prepared to pick up the tab for my extra costs.

    • 13 July 2011 10:40 AM
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    @Neil Kurz
    Is there REALLY a scam? If so, for the benefit of all readers, would you please itemise the pages you are talking about.
    If not, best not say more. Do people a favour, please?

    • 13 July 2011 10:38 AM
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    Realising Reality . . . dear oh dear oh dear.

    • 13 July 2011 09:18 AM
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    Trying to pass yourself off at Land Registry is quite ridiculous. It's quite obvious from your _illegal_ website that your post is nothing more than a cheap advert.

    If you are going to sell Title Plans, perhaps you go to the extreme length of spelling "Title" correctly on the first page order button.

    More humorously the company owning your web domain also owns other such 'niche' websites such as the English Defence League and even IpswichTown.org http://ow.ly/5D8Uy

    Your company is nothing more than a poor imitation of the Land Registry and their highly automated service.

    Incidentally why are you charged £19.95 for a Title Plan when I get them directly from Land Registry, that is the REAL Land Registry for £4.00? Does make your offering look a bit mickey-mouse doesn't it really?

    • 13 July 2011 09:08 AM
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    There’s a sea-change about to come, in the the way that houses are sold in this country and it’s being started by the Land Registry.

    They have recently begun offering a detailed online valuation service called an Instant Valuation Report, something which is specific to an individual house and which gives a valuation using all the available information both on recent sales and using market projections to arrive at a current valuation for the house in question.

    This new report provides exactly the sort of information needed to get the housing market back onto its feet, with houses changing hands as frequently as people would like them to.

    This service is a first and is just what both sellers and estate agents are currently lacking as a method to aid the correct the pricing of houses going up for sale.

    In fact it could revolutionise the the way estate agents both take on, and then deal with sales of houses across the whole country.

    With exceptional valuation knowledge like this now being made publicly available, both buying and selling houses should become a far less stressful and much more enjoyable experience. It will bring both certainty of price and an added confidence to sellers (and their agents) when deciding on the correct asking prices to bring about actual sales.

    This will allow vendors to go ahead with simultaneous purchases which must, in turn, stimulate our whole economy. That’s something that relatively few have been able to manage in recent times owing to the plethora of excessive prices being quoted – mainly through the lack of sufficient valuation information previously available. This lack of information has dogged the housing market and caused such price imperfections that the market has all but stalled in many locations, compared with the levels of completed sales transactions attained in past years.

    The new Instant Valuation Reports, which are available to all applicants, will ‘out’, or spotlight, any house marketing campaigns where prices are not in-line with current market prices, i.e. currently achievable prices.

    Anybody serious about buying a house these days would be well advised to avail themselves of one of these reports. The cost of buying one is approximately £30 per copy. It may be received either by email or by regular post. As an additional extra, if required, a five year future price forecast may also be obtained. It only takes about 24hrs to obtain the report.

    The web address for obtaining these reports is: http://landregistryservices.org/ – Land Registry Services.

    Thinking about this, why don’t all estate agents use these new reports when giving sellers market appraisals, and/or as a check on the vitally important matter of correctly estimating an asking price? We all know that it is vital to set this price correctly if each client is to get their house sold within the planned timescale. Using these reports extensively would dramatically help people to do the house moves that they wish to do and so improve the private housing market in the process.

    • 13 July 2011 08:39 AM
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