From Computer Active 11.04.08:
A new website boasts it can give anyone looking to buy a property the lowdown on just about any house, in any street, in any neighbourhood in the UK.
Zoopla will go head to head with other property websites, such as will Rightmove, Findaproperty and Primelocation. A host of smaller sites also compete for the homebuyer's attention.
However Zoopla says it has the edge by being able to provide value estimates on more than 26 million homes with data taken from the Royal Mail and the Land Registry.
Oh great. Yet another website pitched at sellers and buyers to further clutter up the internet. But maybe I'm being overly harsh: having checked the site over earlier, it did seem to offer most of the functions that the company claimed. But much of the data available on a particular property will only be meaningful when compared with data from other properties. I'm also not sure how much faith I'd put in their 'my estimate' function. Bottom line: while the site may offer a vast array of information, it still needs to be cross-checked extensively and it still requires a lot of virtual leg-work by buyers.
--RELATED POINT-- House prices, of course, are very much in vogue at the moment. In fact, it won’t be long before we are due to move again – although we’re only renting at the moment. Still, a couple more years and my girlfriend and I are hoping to hop on that notorious ‘property ladder’. Whether we simply slide back down to the bottom getting our hands burnt in the process remains to be seen. But whatever happens, by then we’re hoping prices will be more favourable for buyers, although first timers are always going to struggle somewhat. Returning to the present, we’ve got our work cut out repairing some of the damage of our stay. Job number one, for instance, is filling and painting around a high positioned extractor switch, damaged from when we used to jump up and ‘slam-dunk it on and off’. After that it’s a matter of getting the coffee stains out of the carpet, repainting the damaged window frames from our ‘polythene sheeting’ to keep the draughts out of one room in the depth of the winter, resurfacing the occasional table and anything else that needs doing. Other than that, the place is in perfect condition. Well, nearly.
Somehow, I don't think I'd trust anything so important as buying a house to the Internet, secure dealings or no. It just seems to me that there's far too many things that can go wrong - can you tell that I'm not a fan of electronic conveyancing, by any chance?!
ReplyDeleteMichael, that's terrible...
ReplyDeleteBut Zoopla is interesting
I know, I know, Andro! :-( I'm normally a good tenant and think I have been on the whole. It's just this place is such that it's easy to damage; rather defects show through easily.
ReplyDeleteAnd the coffee stains have already been removed and were both total accidents, honest! The windows are in a bad way anyway - very very old and draughty. There has also been a mould problem where the landlord said the roof was ripped off in a storm a couple of years ago and damp got into the wall. It's a converted Victorian ecclesiastical school with walls nearly two feet thick so it's taken ages for them to dry out. Thank God I'm not going to be here for much longer.
Admittedly, the slam dunking was perhaps a trifle clumsy but I've already filled round the edges of the socket - this afternoon in fact. Now I'm just hoping I can get a close colour match with the paint.
The previous tenant had left the place in quite a state before she emigrated leaving loads of companies chasing her for money. Think she was permanently moulting too, as her hair was clogging the hoover up for weeks when I hoovered the carpets! Awful. I still get flashbacks about having to unclog the nozzle - it was like a scene out of Alien.