Guest blog by Gavin Floyd from Deesurveys.
Our Services – Valuations in Residential Housing
DEESURVEYS carry out varied valuations on residential housing including for example:
- Probate
- Help to Buy
- Matrimonial
- CPO & Blight Notice
- Building Insurance Assessments
- Residential Leasehold Extension
- Enfranchisement purposes.
Ultimately while the purpose behind acquiring the report by our clients varies, the result is more or less the same. To that end, we must provide a figure for the property in question and one that necessitates a degree of awareness on the property market, how the market is reacting to the wider economic landscape and how prices are changing.
Resources we use
Among other resources, there are two, freely accessed online resources that we refer to when we produce our valuation reports; those being the RICS Residential Market Surveys and the Land Registry House Price Index.
What is the RICS Residential Market Survey?
The RICS UK Residential Market Survey is available online for free, in which, there are three main parts. The first thing you will see in the report is a summary of observations and changes in the last month. For example, homes with good EPC ratings are performing better in the current market than those without good EPCs.
The second part of the Market Survey is dedicated to statistics where you will find entire rows of graphs and tables showing how the market has changed in pure numbers. This tool is useful to glance through and look for trends.
Below are a few examples of figures from a report, which you may find interesting reflecting how the current economic climate is impacting the residential property market.
The final part of the report provides commentary on the Sales and Lettings markets, separated by region with the individual comments sourced from Surveyors and Estate Agents from those regions. You might even find a few recognisable names here or there. The RICS Residential Market Survey is a great tool for keeping abreast with what is going on.
How Deesurvey’s uses the RICS Survey
We endeavour to make reference to the RICS survey in our valuation reports. This includes when we must carry out the occasional retrospective valuation, going back several years. The RICS has been helpful in providing these older reports. That being said, while the RICs is a helpful report, it is not the only information we rely on at DEESURVEYS to produce our valuations.
The Land Registry House Price Index
The Land Registry House Price Index provides month by month data, showing how property prices have changed. We use it practically in our valuations in conjunction with our comparable data to produce our valuation figures. The LRHPI goes all the way back to 1995, making it a very effective tool when carrying out retrospective valuations.
The graph above is an example of the kind of information you can acquire from the Land Registry House Price Index, showing the direction in change in property prices on a monthly basis in the last year. Although considering recent increases in lending rates and the RICS graphs above, the expectation would be a fall in prices that will become evident in future data releases. Currently it is plain to see that the housing market is undergoing a tumultuous period following periods of uncertainty in recent times.
If you want to look at either the RICS Home Market Survey, or the Land Registry House Price index then you can do so via the links below.
RICS Residential Market Survey: https://www.rics.org/news-insights/market-surveys/uk-residential-market-survey
Land Registry House Price Index: https://landregistry.data.gov.uk/app/ukhpi
Or contact Chris Lewis or Gavin Floyd via the Contact Us page on our website www.deesurveys.com or by emailing info@deesurveys.com
