Is the asking price fair? How to check what similar homes sold for in England and Wales

You can look up what a home in England or Wales sold for, free, on GOV.UK's 'Search sold property prices', which searches by address. Compare homes that are genuinely similar and that sold recently nearby. That is evidence you can put next to an asking price. It is not a valuation, and it does not tell you what you should offer. Scotland's prices are on ScotLIS, and Northern Ireland's are with Land and Property Services. GOV.UK names both on the search page. This is general information, not valuation or financial advice.

Where the official figures are

HM Land Registry Price Paid Data is the sale prices of properties in England and Wales that have been lodged for registration. The guidance we read, 'How to access HM Land Registry Price Paid Data', says the price is the sale price stated on the transfer deed, and the date is the date of transfer on that deed. The postcode is the one used at the time. Later postcode changes are not written back.

Property type is recorded only as detached, semi-detached, terraced, flat or maisonette, or other. Bungalows are not a separate category. End-of-terrace homes are counted as terraced. There is a flag for newly built or established, and for freehold or leasehold. Leases of seven years or less are not in the dataset. Address fields cover the building, and a flat identifier where the building is split. Standard entries are single residential sales for value, collected from January 1995. A wider 'additional' category, from October 2013, includes repossessions, some buy-to-lets, transfers to non-private buyers, and 'other' property types, and it does not label which of those a row is.

The same guidance says Price Paid Data excludes sales that were not lodged, sales that were not for value, and various transfers that are not straightforward sales. The examples it gives include some right-to-buy discounts, transfers of a share such as on divorce, gifts, compulsory purchase and some court orders. If a deed splits the price and the VAT, the recorded price excludes the VAT. If the price is stated as inclusive of VAT, the transaction is left out.

HM Land Registry says the information is released as Price Paid Data under the Open Government Licence. This article does not display a table of prices, so it does not add a separate Crown copyright line. If you republish figures, use the licence text HM Land Registry specifies.

A five-step way to use the figures

• Pick like-for-like homes. The data can tell you detached, semi, terrace or flat, and whether it was new. It cannot tell you the condition, the extension, or the plot.
• Stay close. The same street or postcode is more useful than a whole city. Postcodes in the file are historical.
• Prefer the last 12 to 24 months, then read the lag note below before you treat the very latest months as complete.
• If you want a sense of how the wider market has moved, GOV.UK points you to the UK House Price Index for trends. This article does not apply a percentage adjustment of its own.
• Put the asking price next to those sales. A gap is a question to ask, not a formula for a discount. No source we read gives a typical percentage below the asking price, so this article does not invent one.

What sold prices cannot tell you

They do not describe condition, improvements, lease length, service charges, or why someone accepted that price. The guidance says the time between a sale and registration typically ranges from two weeks to two months. Data for the two most recent months is incomplete and is not a guide to final volumes. Sometimes the gap is longer than two months, and those sales cannot be added until they are lodged. A missing sale is not proof that a home did not sell.

An offer in England and Wales is not legally binding until exchange. GOV.UK says a 'subject to contract' price can still be negotiated, including if a survey finds a problem. Sold prices can inform that conversation. They do not oblige the seller to move.

Using it when you make an offer

Take two or three comparable sales, note how they differ from the home you want, and say what you are offering and why. Do not present a spreadsheet as a valuation. A RICS valuation, where you need one, is a different product from a search of past prices. The lender's valuation is for the lender.

Do it from the address

Start with the address search on GOV.UK, or with TrueDeed's asking-price check, which uses HM Land Registry Price Paid Data. The area-prices page also has a postcode lookup described as Price Paid Data. Round 'average' prices for whole cities on that page were not verified for this article. Do not use those city figures as evidence. Use the address or postcode sales.