House transaction prices - why public?

Adam_151 · 3 Apr 2015 at 20:06

Having just been being nosey at what a family member paid for their house recently, I'm curious as to the reason why such records are made public?

Does it serve a particular purpose?
Is it something that has its origin way back and has just continued?

I don't have a problem with it, just seems a little odd tbh

Uther · 3 Apr 2015 at 20:24

I'm not keen, but only because an identical house to the one I'm trying to sell now went for 15k less last year, and someone has already offered to buy it for that!
House prices have gone up in the last year you know! :rolleyes:

Participant · 3 Apr 2015 at 20:33

Market transparency is normally a good thing, makes it more efficient.

f00b4r · 4 Apr 2015 at 12:00

It's not just the prices, nowadays anyone nosey can have a look at the inside of your house (as it was at the time of last purchase) by a simple internet search.

Psycho Sonny · 4 Apr 2015 at 13:58

Adam_151 said:
Having just been being nosey at what a family member paid for their house recently, I'm curious as to the reason why such records are made public?

Does it serve a particular purpose?
Is it something that has its origin way back and has just continued?

I don't have a problem with it, just seems a little odd tbh

A lot of people lie about how much their house cost them, etc.

I know someone who said their house was £250K, when I checked it was less than £150K.

muon · 4 Apr 2015 at 16:07

Psycho Sonny said:
A lot of people lie about how much their house cost them, etc.

I know someone who said their house was £250K, when I checked it was less than £150K.

Note that if you are purchasing on a share basis then the Land Registry will show an incorrect value.

This only really affects new flats though where such schemes are primarily used.

LeeUK · 4 Apr 2015 at 17:18

I'm nosey and I like to see what properties are selling for on my street that are of the same type.

HangTime · 4 Apr 2015 at 19:41

Adam_151 said:
Is it something that has its origin way back and has just continued?

The data only goes back to the late 90s and IIRC it wasn't published online (at least not for free) until the noughties. It is a relatively new thing.

Main purpose I suppose is transparency i.e. being able to see what official transactions have been recorded, although obviously it does have a number of flaws:
-Not all transactions are visible online (e.g. I bought my house in 2008 and there is no record of it on the usual sites)
-Often prices are accompanied by potentially 'misleading' info looking at projected prices etc which doesn't naturally take into consideration any factors that may have been at play such as whether the property was over/undervalued at the point of sale, what work has been done to the property etc
-Things like p/x deals etc can sometimes result in unexpectedly high transaction volume on a given property e.g. sold multiple times in the same year potentially making people think there is something sinister going on

To be fair most of the flaws are fine as long as you approach the numbers in the right way i.e. don't draw too many conclusions at face value.

D.P. · 6 Apr 2015 at 14:48

I have no issue with actual prices being made public. What I hate is when real-estate websites list their estimated price based on an entirely useless algorithm. Our house is in a small new development of relatively high-end houses for the region but is surrounded on several by much cheaper older housing. The algorithm used to determine house pricing by some websites is some kind of average per square ft + bedrooms within X miles radius. It completely ignores things like quality of the house, houses prices on the street, exact school distract, if you have a freeway going through your back yard or a wildlife pond.

HangTime · 6 Apr 2015 at 20:28

Some of those ignored factors are not easily identified by a generic automated system e.g. 'quality of the house' is very difficult beyond the factors you've already mentioned such as price of local housing of approximately the same size. Not sure about US but in the UK school catchment areas are variable so a property that may be in area for a school one year may not necessarily be the next.

In the UK you can easily search to see sold prices on the street - however unlike the US square footage does not seem to be widely available so you have to resort to viewing floorplans (manually one-by-one for each property) and hoping it is available. Pretty annoying as some 4 bedroom houses are smaller than 3 bedroom houses... the vast majority of 3 bedroom houses are too small for me but to see the full market you still have to sift through all the junk on the off-chance of finding the one that is a reasonable size.