Sold recently? How close to Zoopla/Nationwide valuations was your actual selling price?

[Activemum81]

Hi all,
If you sold recently, pls can you let me know - how close to Zoopla valuation or other valuations (like Nationwide or Halifax), was your actual selling price?

www.nationwide.co.uk/about/house-price-index/house-price-calculator

www.landc.co.uk/calculators/house-price-calculator/

We sold a house in Cornwall a few months ago and it sold for about 7k under the zoopla valuation, but above the value the estate agent thought we’d get.

I wouldn’t really trust Zoopla’s valuations at all. I sold my flat four years ago for 56k. Home report reckoned 58-60 but we part exchanged so took the 56. It then sold six weeks later on the open market for 54. Zoopla now reckons it’s worth 63 but my old neighbour just sold hers, the exact same as mine, for 53k. It also reckons my current house is worth 190k. I remortgaged last year with the Yorkshire building society with a valuation of 160

Thanks Downudderer, please can you tell me in % ?

All they do is take the price the last time the property sold and x it by the average rate of price increase in the local area since that time. So i brought my house at the same time as my neighbours bought an identical one but I paid less than them because my seller wanted a quick sale my house would now be valued at less although they are identical. The system has no way of knowing or taking into account what condition the property is in so again if I bought at the same time as the neighbours identical houses and we paid the same they would be listed as having the same value now. But I could have had a new kitchen and bathroom, new windows, a new roof, freshly decorated, expensive new flooring and have a beautiful fully landscaped garden while the neighbours have done nothing for the last 10 years, not even moved the lawn.
All they can do is give a very rough guide to prices in the area. Unless you have a unique property it will give you a vague idea what your property may be worth but so will looking at what similar properties are being sold for now.

Ime, Zoopla isn't that accurate.

Are you a journalist?

The 'problem' is just that - Zoopla extrapolates the price paid in the year last sold to arrive at a current valuation. Which is why our house was valued by 2 estate agents last year at the Zoopla price - despite the fact we bought at 2/3 original asking price 20 years ago, and have made improvements eg double glazing. We think it's worth more as there isn't another house like ours to compare in our location, but there are several similar in a lesser location, less good school catchment etc, but with significantly smaller plots that have sold for far far more than the EA valuations for ours.

In the month ours was on the market the Zoopla valuation changed 3 times- a total variation of 32k- it went right down, then edged up close to the original valuation and the excess it. We accepted an offer for exactly what it shows as now which is midway between the variations. It’s also what we paid for the house two years ago.

*then exceeded

I'm not a journalist ! we plan to put our house on the market in a few weeks.

Mine sold for about 1% under but the neighbours sold for 3% over zoopla valuations (same street, different house styles).
Take all the predicted valuations with a pinch of salt. Look at sold prices and how long properties are taking to sell. Be realistic with your asking price.

Ours sold for about 20k less than Zoopla said but about 15k more than our estate agent thought we'd get as a max! So it was 7% under zooplas estimate. Zoopla is such a guess. E.g. it knows we have 3 bedrooms but it doesn't know one of them is so small it's basically unusable.

My house sold 35% more than zoopla estimate but it was a full refurb job. Reckon I could of got 5% more if I didn’t go for quick sell.

House I bought was 5% over zoopla estimate and they had put an extension on etc but area has gone down slightly so negated the extension costs.

Ours sold for 2.6 % less than what valuation report said but still 3k over the "offers over "amount so we were fine with it (place needed a new kitchen so we knew it was very unlikely to get the valuation report sum). We had been ready to accept even less if necessary...

We've just sold in London for the price Zoopla said. I didn't even think to check it until now.

I’d take them all with huge pinch of salt

But especially LandC

They value my house 50k down still and my neighbours house as 200k down from the sold price a year ago. And there were bidding wars on both! Believe this is because 1/5 of the street is period properties with large gardens and parking. The rest is terraced with no parking.

They value my old house 10k down. When my old neighbours sold and completed on 20k more than mine a few days ago.

We are in the process of selling for 20k over Zoopla. Like other posters have mentioned - Zoopla does a pretty dumb based on house price last sold at and then a rough average of how values have increased.

It doesn't take into account any improvements made, or if you paid over or below the odds originally. Or the overall price of similar houses in your road/local area.

I'd take it with a good pinch of salt.

If you are worried about it affecting people's interest or valuation you can request to have improvements added to it to reflect investments you've made that would impact its value.

Ours sold for 10% over zoopla & nw valuation last autumn.

We recently sold at 7.5% above the Zoopla estimate. We'd owned the house 8 years. The next door house sold last year at a fairly low price though as they wanted it sold quickly. We bought our current house for 8.5% above the Zoopla estimate. They'd owned it more than 10 years and extended it substantially. This is a popular South East commuter town.

The trouble with Zoopla - as others have pointed out- is that it can only be a best guess. And the guess will never be that accurate as they simply don't have enough information to base it on in many cases. Our new neighbours house is still estimated to be worth significantly less (like, 100K) than ours, despite it being much larger because they have added a very large extension (owing to corner plot). Even though the price we paid for ours has updated on there, it still isn't reflected in the price for theirs because there is no way to account for the work done. Similarly a few roads in our town used to attract a premium due to school catchment but the popularity of the school has declined and the catchment is now much wider, but Zoopla can't take that in to account.

Both of the valuations were off, one £10k over, the other £60k under.

The trouble with the second one is that it is only based on postcode and average percentage rises over time. It doesn’t know if you’re selling a studio flat, a three bed semi or a mahoosive mansion.

I don’t understand how Zoopla works. I thought they took the last sold price and then increased or decreased according to the average of the local market.

But when we were buying this house, we looked at another one with the exact same plan. Someone else bought the other one within the same month. When you look at the Zoopla estimates now, theirs has gone up while ours has gone down. It doesn’t make sense to me and I don’t place any stock in the figures it comes up with.

Neither Nationwide nor Zoopla take into account any works done to my property. I assume they are based on sold prices.

The reason we bought this house was because of the outstanding secondary school but the local primary was in special measures. So it was cheap.

Fast forward 8 years and that local primary was rebuilt and is stunning and is now outstanding. So it pushed our house prices up considerably as we are now in catchment for both an outstanding primary and an outstanding secondary.

We have extended our house and added another room. Zoopla is pretty close to what I think my house is worth, Nationwide is 10% below that. But I base my estimation on the sold prices of local houses.

Zoopla's valuations...ha ha ha...utter tripe, nothing intelligent at all.

Zoopla is usually miles out - normally over.

It valued our last property at £15k more than our estate agent valuation. The EA figure was what we'd expected based on our own research of actual sold prices in the area for similar properties.

We sold at 98% of our asking price, which were happy with. EA had advised us to aim for 95% but be prepared to accept 90%.