Posts tagged ‘value’
What’s your neighbour worth to you?
This is a legacy post from the findaproperty.com blog which is now maintained as an archive within the Zoopla blog. Links have been preserved.
We’d shell out more for a home if it had an extra bedroom, study or bathroom, but it turns out nearly half of us would also pay extra for a property with a good neighbour – £15,321 to be exact.
What’s your neighbour worth?
As long working hours and technology force many of us to spend more time out of sight and in front of screens, new research from FindaProperty reveals 9.5 million of us, or 19%, say they’d like a better relationship with their neighbours.
It’s not so surprising. One of the things people want most from a home is to feel safe, comfortable and welcome, and this is almost entirely dependent on the people who live close to us. It’s not just tangible factors like transport links and square footage that contribute to property prices – the strength of the local community can be a powerful selling point for many buyers too.
Despite the fact that just 39% of us would call our neighbour a friend, we clearly value them. Forty per cent of us say we’d pay more for a home – to the tune of 7% of the cost of the property or £15,321 – if we knew the person living next door would be a trustworthy neighbour. And that’s a lot of extra money for simply making friends across the garden fence or at the front door.
Oooh look, it’s The Apprentice house exclusively revealed by Zoopla.co.uk #apprentice
The 2011 Apprentice House - estimated value of £4,669,636 by Zoopla.co.uk
We love all things property here at Zoopla.co.uk and firmly believe information and good research is the key to making smarter property decisions.
So, whilst watching the first two episodes of the BBC’s The Apprentice earlier this week, we couldn’t help become a little curious as to where exactly this year’s stunning house is located.
We knew the property would be on Zoopla because we list every UK home (all 27m) in our home values section. So, we were hopeful we’d be able to unearth some juicy inside info on this year’s house for you. We weren’t disappointed…
We’d seen the front of the house in the show in Tuesday’s episode (9.03 mins in on BBC iPlayer) where the sixteen hopefuls would call home as they compete to win a £250,000 investment to start their own company, with Lord Sugar as their business partner and so we were hunting a huge pad with a sizeable value tag to match – see below.
The next clue came as Apprentice narrator, Mark Halliley, repeatedly stated “Richmond” as this years location for the house. So, a little navigation in map view (we’ve incorporated Google Street View on Zoopla), then a quick trip to confirm our suspicions and now we can exclusively reveal that the house is actually located on Christchurch Road, East Sheen, London, SW14.
So, what specifics can Zoopla.co.uk tell us about the area and the house?
Average property values in East Sheen are currently £667,199
The average value of property in Christchurch Road, SW14 is £1,266,477
The current Zoopla property value of this year’s Apprentice house is £4,669,636
Then if we look at the property details page on Zoopla we can tell you that the house is a 7-bedroomed, detached, freehold property with 6 bathrooms, 3 receptions and is currrently valued at £4,669,741. We suspect that one of the other rooms (games room / study) is being currently used as a bedroom so that the sixteen (although now 14…games room returns?) hopefuls can each share an en-suite room.
Digging deeper and into the Zoopla Property Archive, where we store historic records of properties from across the UK that at one time have been for sale or to rent on the open market in the last 10 years, we can also see that the property was previously listed for sale on 31st Mar 2004 for £1,800,000 and detailed as a 5-bedroom detached house at that point.
Our sold price records (we have over 16.6m dating back to 1995) show that the Apprentice house was sold on 23rd Apr 2004 for £1,715,000…£85,000 less than the original asking price.
We’ve also done a little more research and found out that the property that was bought in 2004 was then demolished and the stunning property we see on our screens was born!
As always, please feel free to share and use this information, all we ask is that you credit the source as Zoopla.co.uk and link to any of the links above or Zoopla.co.uk. Thank you.
For the picture above, drop us a line on twitter
Follow Zoopla on Twitter
Like Zoopla on Facebook
We’ve launched our first national TV advertising campaign
Finding that special one can sometimes be a bit tricky.
Some are a bit cheap, some a bit scruffy, some too flash and some inadequately sized. Maybe you’re looking for one that’ll gain a few pounds, perhaps you want to know what they’re worth or maybe you like to keep an eye on the older ones?
Luckily we have all the information you need to really find that special one…property, that is!
As a nation we’re obsessed with property. We all love to play the nosey neighbour game, snoop around a celebrity pad, or find out what our home is worth or what our neighbour paid for theirs.
Since we launched back in January 2008 we’ve grown at an unrivalled pace, however our marketing to date has been largely focussed online…
…today, this all changes. We’re making our TV debut as we continue our quest to turn Zoopla into a household name targeting property buyers, renters, sellers and landlords. The initial campaign will run for five weeks to the end of September and is part of an extensive multi-million pound TV, print and digital campaign to run over the coming months. 87% of adults will see the TV ad at least once during the initial five-week period and the TV campaign will include a number of prime-time slots across ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and the Sky digital channels.
The TV ads centre on the theme that finding the perfect property is much like finding the perfect partner and reinforce our core philosophy that free and easily accessible information helps buyers, renters, sellers and owners make better-informed property decisions.
So, why not improve your chances in the property market with Zoopla.co.uk.
Let us know what you think about the advert below, on youtube or twitter.
The official announcement can be found here
Are we on the (long and winding) road to recovery?
Whilst we are still a long way from the values seen before the credit crunch hit, house values appear to have begun a journey on the road (albeit a long one) to recovery.
Since March of this year the total value of the UK housing market has gained £250 billion – great news for homeowners and also means there will be fewer homeowners experiencing negative equity than there were six months ago.
This now takes the total value of the UK residential housing stock to a whopping £5.25 trillion, up over £250 billion (five times the wealth of Mr Bill Gates according to the new Forbes 400 list) from the recent lows in March this year; this figure still remains well below the market peak of over £6 trillion achieved in late 2007.
It’s all very well shouting about eye watering figures, but here at Zoopla.co.uk we’re more interested in telling you what this means for the value of YOUR home on YOUR street. On average the value of your home is likely to have risen £57 per day since March or just over £10,400 in six months – taking the value of the average British home to £203,622.
Whilst these figures are encouraging, and will come as a welcome relief to many homeowners, the figures are still down £31,592 from the December 2007 peak, when the average British house price stood at £235,214.
Home values in England are now up 2.23% since the start of the year and are beginning to recover even faster in Scotland with an increase of 5.25% since January. Average home values in Wales, however have been the slowest to show signs of improvement, up 0.95% in 2009.
If you live in Windsor & Maidenhead you have the biggest reason to celebrate – prices in this area over the last six-months have roared back by over 10.2%. However those living in Durham have less to cheer about as values in this area are the slowest recovering seeing values grow by only 1.1% since March and those living in Stroud in Gloucestershire where property values have fallen a further 3.7% since March are yet to experience any sort of recovery.
So, the next six months will be crucial in determining whether this slow recovery is here to stay or the beginning of a second dip. In the meantime don’t forget to claim your home and monitor the current value of your home on Zoopla.co.uk!
For more best performing and slowest recovering areas and towns, click here.
Guest Blog: Property Snakes & Ladders
There’s a rich seam of property shows on Channel 4 at the moment, commissioned as a result of the current housing market conditions. Following on the heels of Kirstie’s Homemade Home which tracked a thrifty Kirstie Allsopp as she did up her home in Devon with finds from junk and reclamation yards, antiques’ shops and boot fairs, Property Ladder has an altogether different tone for its current series.
Renamed Property Snakes & Ladders – although if the first episode is anything to go by, Property Snakes might have been a better name for it – each episode follows two different developers as they try to make a profit in a falling market. Filming started some time ago and, inevitably, they bought at the top of the market, so their stories are much more nail-biting – and therefore fascinating – than in the past when developers could just sit on a property and do nothing to make a profit. Now, it’s more important than ever to heed the advice of the unfailingly wise Sarah Beeny. But, true to form, not all of them do. and the results are enough to make anyone think twice about property development. And that’s assuming they could get a mortgage deal to do so in the first place.
Meanwhile, in The Home Show, the lovely George Clarke moves in with homeowners who’ve decided it’s far more sensible to stay put and improve what they’ve got. The results are always impressive – for not much more than it would cost in fees to move house (in some cases), he transforms neglected, unimaginative spaces into dream homes with an ease that makes me wonder why anyone would keep their savings in a bank with interest rates as they are, when they could spend the money far more profitably on improving their home’s appearance and long-term value.
So, what next for the housing market and how will this continue to affect what’s on tv? Property forecasts alternate daily between news of green shoots and continuing signs of doom and gloom. At 4Homes, we steer clear of scary headlines and take a realistic view on current housing market conditions, and I think the property tv shows we’ll be sitting down to enjoy over the rest of the summer will continue to reflect that. Then, in the autumn, maybe we’ll all be in the mood for something a little more fanciful.
Lucy Searle is the editor of the Channel 4 property website, 4Homes
