Yahoo! House Price Centre

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Yahoo! House Price Centre - FAQ

What's this service?

Using The Service

All about the data

What is the Yahoo! House Price Centre?

The Yahoo! House Price Centre is a free service from Yahoo! UK and Ireland that allows you to discover the price paid for residential property sold in the UK right back to April 2000.This information is drawn from the publicly accessible Land Registries that record this information on behalf of the government.

In addition to providing this information, we perform calculations on the data to calculate average prices and growth rates for different areas of the UK.

What are the search results telling me?

When you perform a search, we return a list of all the houses that sold recently in that area, with the price paid, and the date that they sold. We return all of the transactions that we know about, right back to January 2000.

What are the maps showing me?

The maps display postcode boundaries that are coloured according to the results of calculations performed on the house price data we hold. Each month we calculate average prices and growth rates for each postcode boundary, allowing you to 'browse' the map looking at areas to identify 'hot spots' and areas of high or low market growth in value.

What are the charts showing me?

The charts display the results of calculations we perform on the house price data we hold. These calculations are performed each month, and stretch back to January 2000.

Figures for average value and % growth in value can be displayed over time periods between 12 and 60 months to show how the value of property, or how the local market has risen or fallen in time.

What can use the Yahoo! House Price Centre for?

All sorts of things! Here are a few suggestions ...

If you're a UK homeowner, you can assess the potential value of your property based upon recent sales of neighbouring properties. Over time you can track how property in your area is growing (or declining) in value.

If you're not a homeowner and are looking to get onto the property ladder, then the Yahoo! House Price Centre is a great way to research the areas that you're considering buying in. You can determine average prices and look at values over time to assess possible returns in the future.

Or, perhaps you're planning a lifestyle change. Want to sell up your city pad and trade it in for a country cottage? Our postcode comparison feature will let you see what your current property might buy you in the new area.

Those are just a few starters for ten - we're sure you'll discover others!

Why do I have to enter a code each time I use the service?

We appreciate it's annoying, but we licence the sales data from the Land Registries, and one of the stipulations of those licences is that we protect the data from prying eyes.

That means that we have to ensure that no crafty computer systems can be programmed to automatically "harvest" the data out of our database. That's why we have to ask you for a code each time you make a search.

Where do you get all that information?

We licence the data from the Land Registries of England and Wales, and Scotland. At this time we do not licence data from the registry that covers Northern Ireland.

Whenever residential property is sold in these areas, that sale is recorded in these registers, and in turn made available to us.

Who are these Land Registries anyway?

Land Registries are executive government agencies that maintain records of (amongst other things) property sales in their territory. Yahoo! Is not affiliated with any agency - we are customers of theirs, licensing their data from them to provide this service to you.

Property in England and Wales is recorded in one registry, property in Scotland another.

Further details: http://www.landregistry.gov.uk/ and http://www.ros.gov.uk/

Why is there no data for Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man?

We do NOT currently offer house price data for Northern Ireland, The Channel Islands or the Isle of Man because the their land registries either do not offer their data for license, or do offer it in ways compatible with our system

The Northern Ireland's land registry can be found here: http://www.lrni.gov.uk/

The Isle of Man's land registry can be found here: http://www.gov.im/registries/general/landreg.xml

Is what you're doing legal?

Yes it is! We license sales data from the government's official Land Registries.

This information is in the public domain and available to anyone. We've just made it easier for you to access.

How often is your data updated?

The house price information is updated approximately once a month. We hold data for England & Wales right back to April 2000 when digital records began, and back to June 2003 for Scotland.

As soon as new data is released to us by the different Land Registries, we set about importing it into our main database and updating all the calculations that power our mapping and charting systems.

You can check the "freshness" of the data at any time by consulting the title bar above the map, and the copyright statement at the bottom of each page.

Why is the data a few months old compared to today's date?

Data gets entered into the Land Registries as soon as it's lodged with them by solicitors conveyancing a sale. They have up to 24 months to register a completed sale with the appropriate Land Registry, but typically their data arrives between 3 and 18 months after a sale.

For that reason, we display data with a 3 month "lag" as a minimum, and data up to 24 months ago is still subject to change each month - although in decreasing instances over time.

Sales more than two years ago will have been registered, and as such data beyond this point is considered final and should not change.

But, I know a property sold over a year ago and it's still not showing up! Why not?

This could be for one of the following reasons:

  • The sale has not been registered yet. As previously mentioned this can take up to 2 years.
  • The official postal address may differ from the address you think the property has.
  • It is not a residential property sale, but a commercial one. These are excluded from the data supplied to us.
  • The property may not have actually been sold.
  • A very small percentage of sales are rejected by our system because there is an error in the data that prevents correct processing.
  • It may be a Land Registry error.

How do you perform your calculations?

Our database holds all of the valid sales data provided by the Land Registries, with any malformed entries discarded. Malformed entries are those which we cannot read correctly and may cause errors in our subsequent calculations.

We then perform calculations on that data to determine the figures for national averages, area averages, growth calculations etc. that are charted or used by the mapping components to show local area analyses. When we update our data - approximately once a month - we re-calculate those numbers, so that you're assured the most up to date view.

Detailed descriptions of the various functions we use are shown below:

Mapping calculations

These are the calculations used to 'colour' the postcode boundary shapes displayed on the map based views.

There are two types of display - average value and % growth in value. In addition, you can choose to display calculations for particular property types - Detached, Flat, Semi-detached, Terraced, or All combined) - but only for areas within England and Wales.

  • Choosing 'Average Value' shows the average price paid for property in that enclosing area in the past 12 months.
  • Choosing '% Growth in value' shows the percentage rise or fall in average value for the past twelve months compared to the preceding 12 month period. Positive values mean that house prices are rising, negative numbers mean that house prices are falling.

We perform these calculations using the following methodology.

  1. We define the 'current month' is as the month during which the calculations are performed. Furthermore, we define a 'baseline date' as being 00:00 on the 1st day of the month in which the calculations are performed.
  2. We define 'the current year' as the 12 month period that encompasses all sales dates that are >= 15 months prior the baseline date and < 3 months prior baseline date.
  3. We define the previous year as the 12 month period that encompasses all sales dates that are >= 27 months prior the baseline date and < 15 months prior baseline date.
  4. We then perform a series of calculations to determine the numbers and values used to create the map overlays:
    • Average value - This is the mean value of prices paid for properties sold in the target postcode and target property type with a sale date within the current year.
    • % Growth in Value - This is the difference between the average price paid in the current year and the average price in the previous year expressed as a percentage i.e. (100 x current_price / previous_price) - 100)

Charting Calculations

These are the calculations used to create the charts in the Market Analysis pages.

There are two types of display - average value and % growth in value. You can choose to display calculations for particular property types - Detached, Flat, Semi-detached, Terraced, or All combined (but only for areas within England and Wales), and you can view charts over a 12, 24, 36, 48 or 60 months or a custom time interval.

In addition to the charts, the actual calculated numbers are shown in a table below the chart.

  • Choosing an 'Average Value' chart shows the average price paid for property in that enclosing area in the past 12 months.
  • Choosing '% Growth in value' shows the percentage rise or fall in average value for the past twelve months compared to the preceding 12 month period. Positive values mean that house prices are rising, negative numbers mean that house prices are falling.

For Scottish House Sales, why don't you display the full details - eg. Application Type?

For consistency we've opted to show the same information for Scottish sales as those recorded in England and Wales, and to leave out the application type.

Do you include commercial property sales?

At this time we DO NOT offer prices paid for the sale of commercial property, only residential sales.

Does the price shown include Stamp Duty?

We show the price actually paid for the property, not including any Stamp Duty, or professional fees associated with the sale - eg. Solicitors, Local Searches etc.

Can I have my sale details removed from the Yahoo! House Price Centre?

I'm afraid we can't do this.

We license a copy of the sales data from the government Land Registries. This information is in the public domain, and freely available to anyone requesting it - not just users of the Yahoo! House Price Centre.

If you have reason to request the removal of your details, you should contact the relevant Land Registry, as only they have the authority to make changes to data. Any changes they make are passed onto us, and will be updated in due course.

The map link from a sale record is wrong

The link uses the postcode to determine the mapping view, and centres the map on the area covered by that postcode. In larger, rural areas this can sometimes only give an approximation of position. This aspect is only intended as a guide to location, and not an absolute reference.

Why are some of the areas on the map coloured black?

Areas of the map are coloured to indicate average price bands and changes in value over time.

When we do not have data to display, we colour the area in black to indicate to you that we have no data to display for that region.

This occurs most often in Scottish areas where you request a display by property type - eg. Terraced or Semi-detached housing - because the Scottish data does not include information on property type so we can't split out the property types when performing those calculations. We do provide figures for all property types instead.

Black areas can also be seen in areas of England & Wales where there there simply isn't any of that property type sold in the period you requested, or at all. Eg. In dense inner city areas there's very little detached property available for sale (if any at all), or in remote rural areas there are little or no Flats for sale.