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Honest, data-led insight on UK property.
Plain-English articles on buying, selling, investing and auctions. Sources cited, no hype.
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- 20 Oct 2026
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sellingHouse value calculator by postcode: how it works and how far to trust itHow a house value calculator by postcode works: Land Registry sales, the UK House Price Index, what the data cannot see and how to judge the result you get.20 Oct 2026sellingHow much is my flat worth?How much is my flat worth? Why a flat is valued differently from a house: lease length, ground rent, service charge and which Land Registry sales to compare.20 Oct 2026buyingHow to check if a house is in a flood zoneHow to check if a house is in a flood zone in England: the free GOV.UK long-term flood risk check, what it does not show, flood warnings and insurance.20 Oct 2026generalHow to find an EPC for a propertyHow to find an EPC for a property: search the GOV.UK register by postcode, street and town or certificate number, what you see, and what to do if none turns up.20 Oct 2026sellingHow to find out how much your house is worthFour ways to find out how much your house is worth in the UK: Land Registry sold prices, agent valuations, a surveyor and online tools. What each tells you.20 Oct 2026generalHow to find your property boundariesHow to find your property boundaries in England and Wales: get the Land Registry title plan, why it shows a general boundary only, and what to do in a dispute.20 Oct 2026generalDeed of variation: changing who inherits a propertyWhat a deed of variation is, the two-year time limit, how inheritance tax, capital gains tax and stamp duty treat it, who signs, and what it means for a house.16 Oct 2026sellingEarly repayment charge when you sell: what you oweSelling while you still have a mortgage? Learn what an early repayment charge is, how to ask for a redemption statement, and how to check your equity first.16 Oct 2026sellingHow much do estate agents charge in the UK?How estate agent fees work in the UK: commission plus VAT, sole and joint agency, upfront fees, what you can negotiate, and a worked example you can adapt.16 Oct 2026sellingEWS1 forms explained for flat sellersWhat an EWS1 form is, when a lender may ask for one, what B1 and B2 mean, who arranges it, what to do if your block has none, and the leaseholder protections.16 Oct 2026sellingNegative equity: can you still sell your home?Negative equity means you owe more than your home is worth. See how to check, your options, what happens to the shortfall and where to get free advice first.16 Oct 2026buyingRestrictive covenants: what they mean when you buy or sellWhat a restrictive covenant is, where to find it on the title register, what happens if it is breached and how it can be varied, removed or insured against.16 Oct 2026buyingSubsidence: can you sell or buy a house with it?What subsidence is, how it differs from heave and settlement, the signs, what to do, and how it affects buying, selling, insurance and a mortgage.16 Oct 2026buyingTenants in common vs joint tenants: what changes when you buy, sell or separateThe difference between tenants in common and joint tenants, how to check which you are, how to change, and what it means when one owner dies or you sell.16 Oct 2026buyingWhere does my property boundary actually run?For almost every registered property in England and Wales there is no official, precise legal boundary on record. What exists is a title plan showing a "general boundary" and a free INSPIRE index polygon showing the indicative extent — both are approximate, and neither settles a dispute with a ne…21 Sept 2026buyingTitle register vs title plan — what each one shows, and what they costThe title register is the written record: who owns the property, the tenure, the price paid, the mortgage, and any rights or restrictions. The title plan is the map showing the property's general extent. They are two separate documents and you buy them separately.21 Sept 2026buyingWhat Land Registry sold price data does not includePrice Paid Data covers residential sales in England and Wales lodged for registration since January 1995 — but it deliberately leaves out whole categories of transfer. If you treat it as "every sale", you will draw the wrong conclusion from a quiet street.21 Sept 2026buyingWhy is my house sale not showing in the sold price data?Almost always because of the lag: a sale only appears once it has been lodged with HM Land Registry and included in a monthly release, which routinely takes a couple of months and can take longer. The second most common reason is that the transfer is one of the types Price Paid Data excludes.21 Sept 2026buyingHow to find out who owns a property in England and WalesFor registered property, the owner is named on the title register, which anyone can buy from GOV.UK for £7 online. There is no free public search that returns an owner's name, and any site claiming otherwise is either reselling the same register entry or guessing.21 Sept 2026buyingHow to read a title register: the three parts explainedA title register is always in the same three parts: the property register (what the land is), the proprietorship register (who owns it and any restrictions on selling), and the charges register (what burdens it — mortgages, covenants, rights of way). Reading it in that order tells you the story q…21 Sept 2026buyingHow to check the sold price history of any UK addressEvery residential sale lodged with HM Land Registry since January 1995 is public, free, and searchable by postcode. You can see what a specific house last sold for, when, and what its neighbours achieved — which is the single most useful piece of free evidence before you offer.21 Sept 2026buyingAsking price, sold price and online estimate — what each one actually meansAn asking price is what a seller hopes for, a sold price is what somebody actually paid, and an online estimate is a model's guess built from sold prices. Only one of the three is a fact, and it is the middle one.21 Sept 2026buyingHow to find comparable sales for a property yourselfA comparable is a sale of a genuinely similar property, nearby, recently. Get those three right and a handful of sales tells you more than any automated figure; get them wrong and you can justify almost any price you like.21 Sept 2026buyingWhy two houses on the same street sell for very different pricesBecause the sold-price record carries almost none of what actually drives a price. Two addresses twenty metres apart can differ by a third on extensions, condition, aspect, parking, lease length and how motivated each seller was — and none of that is in the dataset.21 Sept 2026buyingWhy property sites disagree about what the same house is worthBecause each one uses a different basis and a different sample, and almost none of them tell you which. Same house, same public data, three answers — the difference is method, not secret knowledge.21 Sept 2026buyingWhat a district median price can and cannot tell you about one houseA district median is a good way to compare places and a poor way to price a property. It answers "what does a typical sale here look like", not "what is this house worth" — and the gap between those two questions is where people lose money.21 Sept 2026buyingHow to find any property's EPC for freeEvery home marketed for sale or let in England and Wales since 2008 must have an Energy Performance Certificate, and the register is public and free. You can look up a property's current rating, its floor area and its recommended improvements without asking the agent for anything.21 Sept 2026buyingWhat each EPC band actually meansAn EPC band is a letter from A to G summarising a modelled energy efficiency score, where A is the most efficient. It is a model of the building fabric and heating system, not a measurement of what the last occupant actually spent.21 Sept 2026buyingWhy your energy bills do not match the EPCAn EPC models a standard household in a standard pattern of use, so it is a fair way to compare two buildings and a poor way to predict one family's bills. Two identical houses with the same band can differ by hundreds of pounds a year purely on how the people inside live.21 Sept 2026buyingWhy council tax bands are still based on 1991 valuesEnglish bands were set on what a property was worth on 1 April 1991 and have never been revalued. That is why a band can look obviously wrong today, and why the comparison that matters when you challenge one is with neighbouring properties, not with today's price.21 Sept 2026buyingHow to check flood risk for an address — and which service to useFor England, the buyer-facing answer comes from the Environment Agency's "Check your long-term flood risk" service, which gives a High, Medium, Low or Very low rating for each source of flooding. The separate Flood Zone 1/2/3 language belongs to the planning system, not to homebuyers.21 Sept 2026buyingCrime counts and crime rates are not the same thingOpen police data publishes counts of recorded crimes in an area, not rates per head of population. A busy district with shops, a station and a night-time economy will always out-count a quiet residential one, and that tells you about footfall as much as about safety.21 Sept 2026buyingHow to look up planning applications near a propertyPlanning applications are public. You can see what has been applied for at the property itself and what is proposed nearby — which is how you find out about the flats going up behind the garden before you exchange, not after.21 Sept 2026buyingThe free checks to run before you make an offerBefore you commit to a price, every one of these can be checked for nothing from official sources. Doing them takes under an hour and is the cheapest leverage you will ever have in a negotiation.21 Sept 2026buyingWhat a conveyancer's searches actually cover — and what they do notConveyancing searches are a specific, limited set of enquiries to public bodies about the land — not an inspection of the building. They will tell you about planning, drainage and the road outside; they will tell you nothing about the roof.21 Sept 2026buyingWhat the seller has to tell you on the property information formThe TA6 Property Information Form is where the seller answers, in writing, the questions that public data cannot reach — past flooding, disputes with neighbours, works done, guarantees held. It is one of the most useful documents in the transaction and the one buyers most often skim.21 Sept 2026buyingWhat "sold subject to contract" and "under offer" really meanBoth mean an offer has been accepted and neither is binding on anyone in England and Wales. Until contracts are exchanged, either side can walk away, change the price, or accept a different offer — and that is legal, not sharp practice.21 Sept 2026buyingGazumping: What It Is, Is It Legal and How to Stop ItGazumping is a seller accepting a higher offer after already accepting yours. Gazundering is a buyer dropping their offer just before exchange. Both are possible in England and Wales for one reason: nothing is binding until contracts are exchanged.21 Sept 2026generalWhat "data as at" dates mean, and why they matterEvery dataset on this site carries the date the data actually runs to, not the date the page was built. The two are routinely months apart, and confusing them is how people end up quoting a market that has already moved.21 Sept 2026sellingHow to read an estate agent's valuation criticallyThree agents will give you three numbers, and the highest is not the most accurate — it is usually the one most eager for the instruction. Ask each of them for the evidence rather than the figure, and the spread between them stops being mysterious.21 Sept 2026sellingThe documents to get together before you list your homeMost delays between offer and exchange come from paperwork that could have been found weeks earlier. Gathering it before you list is the cheapest thing a seller can do to protect a sale.21 Sept 2026buyingHow to research an area properly before you commitArea research goes wrong when people read one number and stop. The useful version takes a postcode, pulls several independent official datasets, and pays attention to where they disagree.21 Sept 2026buyingHow to compare two areas fairly using open dataA fair comparison holds everything constant except the thing you are comparing: same period, same dataset, same geography size, same property type. Get any one of those wrong and you will produce a confident answer to a question you did not ask.21 Sept 2026generalThe free official data sources every UK buyer can useNearly everything you need to research a property is published by government under an open licence. This is the working list, what each one covers, and where each one stops.21 Sept 2026sellingWhat an EPC costs a seller, and when you must have oneYou must have a valid Energy Performance Certificate before a property is marketed for sale or let, and it lasts ten years. If the existing certificate is still in date, you do not need a new one — even if the rating is poor.21 Sept 2026buyingWho pays council tax on an empty property between sale and move-inLiability follows ownership, so from completion it is yours even if nobody has moved in. Some councils give a short discount on an empty, unfurnished property, but it is discretionary and increasingly rare.21 Sept 2026buyingWhat permitted development lets you do without planning permissionPermitted development rights allow a range of works — many extensions, loft conversions and outbuildings — without a planning application, within strict size and position limits. The rights are narrower than most people assume and can be removed entirely in some areas.21 Sept 2026generalFree property checks here vs the official services — what each one gives youEverything we show for free comes from an official source you can also go to directly. We aggregate them into one search; the government services are authoritative and, for anything legally operative, are the ones to rely on.21 Sept 2026buyingGetting title documents: buy them direct from GOV.UKThe title register and title plan cost £7 each to download from GOV.UK, or £11 per document for an official copy sent by post. Third-party sites resell the identical documents at a markup, because the data comes from the same register either way.21 Sept 2026generalWhat actually costs money in UK property research, and what never shouldMost of the data people pay for is published free by government. The genuine costs sit in a short list — official copies, searches, surveys and professional advice — and knowing which is which saves more than any discount code.21 Sept 2026buyingHow up to date is sold price data, and why there is a lagPrice Paid Data is published monthly, but a sale only enters it after completion, lodging with HM Land Registry and registration. The practical effect is that the most recent couple of months always look quieter than they really were, and will fill in later.21 Sept 2026