How To Value My House

We’ve previously written a page on “how much is my house worth?” which is geared towards what we would offer you for your property, but before going ahead and selling your house to either ourselves or through an estate agent you should do your research and determine the value of your property.

Even if you get a valuation from your estate agent don’t just take it as gospel, calculating the value of your house is something that you should look into yourself as well.

Estate agents can often over-inflate your house price in order to get you on their books, only for it to later not generate enough interest and you having to lower it anyway to tap into the demand.

What affects your houses value?

Before diving into how you should determine the value of your home, you first need to know what is taken into consideration and can have an impact on it's value. Here are the main factors:

• The more desirable the location, the higher the value

• The size and type of house, larger houses tend to fetch more, although this isn't always true

• Crime rates in the area, increased crime can reduce your homes value

• If the house has suffered or is suffering from subsidence it will have a significant negatvie effect on it's value

• The same is true of Japanese knotweed, as this can be expensive to treat

• If your in a flood risk area this can impact it's value & also deter prospective buyers

• Proximity to local amenities

• School catchment areas

• Having good transport links can have a positive impact on value

• General property condition

• Quality of kitchen & bathroom, the most expensive rooms

• Another thing that affects the value could be living near a green space.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has released findings that living within 100 metres of public green space, such as parks, playing fields and allotments, can add significant value to property prices.

On average, living close to a green space adds £2,500 to the value of a house. On top of this, if the house has views over open greenery or stretches of water, it adds around £4,600 or 1.8% to the price.

This data was gained by researchers analysing details of over a million house sales in urban areas in both England and Wales between the years of 2009 and 2016.

The details were gathered from Zoopla and used to estimate how much green spaces are valued by people buying homes.

It turned out that the more green space near a property, the higher the value it added, even more so if it is very nearby.

For example, homes within 100 metres of public green spaces average £2,500 more than those over 500 metres away. Therefore, buying a home closer to a green space adds a premium of 1.1%.

This is especially apparent if the house is detached; a detached home within 100 metres of a public green space can add around 1.9% to its price.

How to determine the house value

There are several factors you need to consider when looking at valuing your house, and you should look at a variety of different ways of valuing your property in order to get an overall figure.

Get an estate agents opinion

Estate agents want to get your business, so you can get them to look around your property and do a valuation before deciding whether you want to go with them or not.

They should have a lot of information about the local market so should be knowledgeable and generally reliable, however like previously mentioned please be aware they are trying to win your business by providing you with an over inflated market price.

Speak to your neighbours

If you know any of your neighbours well enough, have a quick chat, they may have done a bit of research themselves or have an idea of how much their house is valued at. You should get as many opinions as you can, so speak to as many neighbours as you have a friendly relationship with!

Sold house prices in the area

Using Rightmove you can find sold house prices in your area, simply type in your postcode and view the previous listings. This may not always be the most useful as there could be several different property types in a variety of different conditions, however most the time you should be able to pick out something similar. Try not look at data that is too far back, ideally you want the most recent sold property.

Work done on the house

When it comes to selling your house, you need to consider the amount of work you’ve done on it, general aesthetics won’t add too much value but when you add things like kitchens, bathrooms or even an extension it can add a significant amount of value to the home, not to mention make it more appealing to potential buyers.

Market trends

Keep an eye on what’s happening in your area. It’s always good to check property listings to see how much they are being put on the market for in your area and how quickly they are selling, a very quick sale could indicate that they’ve priced the house too low whereas a slow sale is vice versa.

Online house value calculators

Be aware that this is just an estimate & a bit of a finger in the air based on the surrounding property sales and the information they know about the property, but they are obviously unaware of any work you have done in the property so it’s just a figure to use as a guideline.

Here are 3 popular online tools you can use to get a general idea of your house value:

• Zoopla

• Rightmove

• Yopa

Ways to add value to your home

Was the valuation of your house not quite where you wanted it to be? If you've got a bit of extra cash there are quite a few things that you can do in order to boost the value of your home, if done right of course. Here are the main things you can do:

• Converting a loft space - this could be used to add an extra room or just some useful space

• As mentioned earlier in the article, kitchen and bathrooms are the most expensive rooms, so having high quality finish for these can add value

• Extension - Adding bedrooms or extra rooms is going to have a positive impact on the value

• Improve energy efficiency - If you improve the efficiency of the home it can lead to saving on bills, which adds value

• The garden - having a presentable garden that can suit all types of people or families is going to have an impact on the appeal and potentially value

What else to be aware of

Looking to sell your house? Think you've figured out the properties value? Here are a few of the other things you should be aware of:

You often won't achieve full market value

Be aware that the price you put your house up at isn’t likely to be the price that you achieve, not unless it’s so desirable that you start a bit of a bidding war.

Typically the agreed price is going to be lower than that of the price you list it at, which is something you need to take into account, it’s always good to decide how low you will accept prior to listening to offers.

Ceiling price

You have to be careful with having large extensions or buying a kitchen to improve your homes value, but your road will have a ceiling price.

What this means is that there will be a maximum value your home can achieve, no matter what you do to it.

As an example you might have a house in poor condition valued at £75K but a house in immaculate condition down the road sold for £100K, renovating the house may cost more than it will achieve when it comes to sell, so you may have to think about a cheaper kitchen or bathroom for cost efficiency.

Your home is worth what people will pay

Sometimes the market just isn't there, and you may have to drop the price of your home in line with buyers expectation in order to generate interest. Before you do so, you should always consider alternatives such as ourselves!

Comparable properties

Another thing that you need to consider when marketing your property is if there are any comparable properties nearby that are up for sale.

What we mean by this, if you've determined your house's value, but a few streets away someone has a similar house but is selling significantly lower for a quick sale, it's going to take you a longer time to sell at the price you've determined.