How did people know if house prices were fair before the internet?

[KievLoverTwo]

Just idle ponderings.

It must have been a nightmare if you were moving to an unknown area.

I also wonder if down valuations by lenders were common back in the paper print out days.

You bought lots of local papers, contacted estate agents in the area and then they sent you lots of printouts of details on the houses that fitted your criteria. You'd map them out on the A-Z map and try and work it all out from there

15+ years ago, local newspapers were very common (our town certainly had a daily one for quite a while). There used to be hefty property supplements each week (50+ pages of listings weren't especially unusual).

Estate agents had a pretty good idea what was going on with competitors too.

Huh, I don't remember the folks with newspapers, just reams of paper from printed particulars. Interesting to learn.

Also, back then, they ALWAYS used to put the garden length in feet on details. Now you almost never see them online, and garden pictures are almost always stretched to make them look twice the size.

I wonder which was the most stressful move period.

Before with no internet and access to Land Registry etc, or now with internet and a lot of meddled with photos and places like Zoopla and their nuts algorithms making folks think their house is worth a lot more than it actually is.

BRING BACK GARDEN SIZES!!!

Newspapers used to have supplements once a week with all the houses for sale in them. So you could compare prices.

There was not as much information (easily) available then as there is today. But it wasn't totally a shot in the dark.

I guess house prices remained pretty static for quite a while so people assumed their house was worth roughly what they paid for it and a little bit more (these are my wild assumptions!). Property supplements I'm newspapers were very much a thing - I worked for a local newspaper about 20 years ago and they were still a thing then (in fact the income from that pretty kept the paper afloat).

We used to get the Evening Standard and would marvel at how much more expensive things were in certain areas of London- if you wanted something cheap, you'd look at Hackney and Deptford. Oh how I laugh now 🤣

The last proper property crash (the one were they didn`t react with a never before tried global monetary experiment to keep debt holders afloat) was just coming to an end as people started to get the internet at home (around 1997 or thereabouts) People were not particularly interested in property for the decade or so before that, and they expected it to be cheap and a potential loss maker.

People who bought in "gentrified" areas recently probably won`t be laughing now.

Local papers, and I remember my parents used to spend ages looking at estate agent windows (I'm 42).

When we were actually house-hunting we'd get masses of print-outs of estate agent particulars, both from visiting and in the post.

i think estate agents had to work harder to sell a house. We moved to our present house, a new area for us, before Rightmove etc became a big thing. We were sent house details through the post, picked up local newspapers etc. New work colleagues of dh told us which areas were ‘good’ and which to avoid. We came on weekends and drove around different areas to suss them out. Now a lot of background research can be done online.

Sorry, just realised I didn’t really answer your question.

Our local paper did (does?) a large pullout supplement every Thursday, it was almost as thick as the main news part. It was the newspaper equivalent of Rightmove as every local EA used to put their properties on it with the image of the house front. I think they advertised a house three times in a row then put a newer one in on week 4. I used to love looking through that.

I remember my dad getting faxed a load of property particulars. Completely pointless as all the images just became a blurry black and white mess 😂

I used to love looking at the property pages!

I agree with you about garden sizes.

Pictures taken from the most flattering angle but when you get there you realise that the lovely extension they have done has eaten up all but a postage stamp worth of grass.

I started measuring gardens on google maps to get an indication before I would view somewhere (half of why we moved was for more outdoor space so that we could fit a climbing frame!)

I couldn't have coped pre internet 😂

local papers, local estate agents. I still have the paper brochures produced for my first house sale.

I moved area, which meant travelling for a couple of weekends, spending the day in estate agents, comparing sold prices, asking for advice, building relationships, doing research. Sitting in village pubs chatting to the locals.

It was good fun. I never made a bad choice.

When we had to move some distance for work in the 1970s we subscribed to the local papers for a few months to get their adverts, and registered with local estate agents. The estate agents never sent us anything suitable! Eventually in desperation I placed a "property wanted" advert in the classified adverts, with a PO Box ( remember those?). Despite having specific requirements we got offered all sorts, but one was spot on.

Actually we did the same in the mid 80s, for our second house. Not sure a wanted ad would find us a house these days, but pre internet people tended to read the local paper cover to cover!

As regards fairness, I don't think it was that easy to find out, but I suppose you just compared houses in the area and asked locals about any pitfalls.

I remember this!

Usually on a Friday here, you would have the property pages at the back (small town, weekly paper) and each agent had their own section. You also had people with personal ads "3 bed semi, close to Blackhouse Grammar School, with garage £165k ONO"

Friday was a highlight day, buy the paper and scour the property pages for "NEW". You never knew what to expect when you went in through the front door as there was only ever a front door picture.

I also wonder if down valuations by lenders were common back in the paper print out days.

One of my friends' bought a property just when everyone was getting the internet at home but it was still dial up unless you were in a cable area. Anyway her property was downgraded by the surveyor. Her and her vendor met in the middle. This was at the turn of this century.

Oddly around the same time I had relations buying properties and their properties weren't downgraded. So they paid what they negotiated.

I loved the huge free local weekly property paper and getting the paper particulars through the post for viewings. Those were the days!

I could tell you the price point of every road in our town. It was just like Rightmove but slower.

People viewed more houses as you couldn’t write stuff off based on the photos either. Phil & Kirsty would approve of that.

People now can use google maps to check out garden sizes. When we were looking for houses in 1986 there was no google maps. We were sent details of properties by estate agents. One property looked good and we booked a viewing. When we got there it was next to a railway line. Some of the railway line was visible from the front and the estate agents had airbrushed this out in the photo.

In the 80s it was just the newspaper listings and printouts inside eastate agents that you could just take for ones you liked the look of. Photos were not as deceptive as now and you simply compared the price of one house for sale to another on the same or nearby street.

Of course, then as now, the bank would send round a valuer to check they would lend the required amount against its purchase. So the bank valuation was your biggest test of “fairness”, they were/are not going to lend more on a house than they could sell it for if they had to repossess.

So nothing much changed then, the lender is always going to tell you how much it is "worth", doesn`t really matter if you do your research online or from a newspaper or word of mouth? One great thing about the internet though is apps like PropertyLog that let you catch out all the silly sellers who think their house is worth an extra 100k because they put a new kitchen top in or something.

let you catch out all the silly sellers who think their house is worth an extra 100k because they put a new kitchen top in or something.

ActuaLOL

Thanks for the feedback guys, I really love some of what you have told me. Talking to colleagues, driving around, the excitement of the big property supplement thumping through the door on a Friday. Even the idea of a photo of nothing but a door sounds quite intriguing.

I know a particular village I've been interested in still goes mostly by word of mouth. Which is tough if you don't already live there but want to!

@Flossflower so they just airbrushed before photoshop huh?

I came across a place recently where the 360 facility showed you three rotting ceilings, which the next agent promptly photoshopped out when they took their own photos.

Which is nice.

All the local free papers had a big section at the back with all the properties for sale, sometimes even an entire supplement.

You spent your Sunday afternoons walking around looking in all the estate agents' windows, which were mostly concentrated in the same two or three roads of any given town centre, so you could see what was on and compare locations and values etc. Then on Monday morning you rang up for particulars of anything that had taken your fancy and got a nice wodge of paper through the post a day or two later so you could plan your viewings. If you were househunting at a distance, you just rang up and stated your parameters, then did your comparisons when the paper mountain arrived.

I think there was probably less sharp practice around valuing and marketing of property then too. And agents tied sellers in for longer, so there was less hopping around from agent to agent, and shenanigans with price "reductions" and sales history generally.

Plus prices were not so insane as a % of income, so perhaps the ruthless approach to getting best value that we're all concerned with now wasn't so necessary.