A 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.
How to do it
- Start with the same postcode, then widen to the outward district only if you cannot find enough sales.
- Match the property type first — detached to detached, flat to flat. A terraced sale is weak evidence for a semi.
- Prefer the last 12 months. Beyond about 24 months you are comparing across a different market and need to say so.
- Match size where you can. Floor area from an EPC is free and turns a raw price into a £ per square metre you can actually compare.
- Throw out the outliers deliberately and say why — a probate sale, a sale between family, or a new-build premium are all real prices that are poor comparables.
- Write down how many sales you used. "Based on 6 sales within 0.25 miles in the last 12 months" is a defensible statement; a single number with no sample size is not.
The reason professionals state their basis and sample size is that everybody's numbers differ otherwise, and nobody can tell whose is better. State yours and the disagreement becomes solvable.
Check it yourself, free
Sold prices for any postcode — no account, no email wall.
Sources
Related
- How to check the sold price history of any address
- Why two houses on the same street sell for very different prices
- How we value — the method, published
- EPC finder
Last reviewed: 2026-09-20. We check these against the linked official sources and re-date the page when they change.