polythene pam

It's too late to change your mind so all you are doing is torturing yourself with the question! I bought a year ago and prices have fallen since. I just delude myself that the houses that sold for less than mine are somehow worse and require more work or something. It keeps me sane.

We asked for a revaluation when we bought our house last year. We're in a semi and the matching identical semi is valued at 10k less than ours (approx £80 a year less in rates for them). We got the letter saying it would take them 3 more months and then they wrote saying their valuation was correct. We left it at that. Have you checked how your valuation compares with the neighbours?

Maybe it would have been shown in court that Quinn is, as alleged, a ******* ****. The evidence seems to point in that direction.

Apologies Chunkey, I thought you were looking throughout Belfast. I understand wanting to stay with what you know - we looked at Rosetta/Ormeau when we bought but stayed in Finaghy in the end. We went to see a house in Ormeau. It was in Ailesbury Drive. It was a lovely area and very peaceful. Have you considered Hampton at the bottom of Sunnyside Street? It's a development of modern houses with small gardens and would be a good FTB choice, although you'd grow out of it with a family. It would be very rentable too if you're looking for tenants.

I live in Finaghy and find where I live very mixed in terms of religion (hard to know for sure but I've made deductions based on what neighbours have said). There are some nice house for sale near me in Priory Park (prob overpriced but you can check RV and work out the value). They would be in the140-150k bracket. Finaghy has got excellent transport links with the train line, the Lisburn road bus corridor and the motorways. I'm not from Belfast and have always felt safe here - safer than when I lived on the Ormeau Road although, in fairness, that was years ago.

I'd say the rates people would have a right laugh if someone wrote in to have their rates increased. It could be worth a try but it'll get to the 155k level and not 165k. The rates were set for January 2005 so the RV will be less than your friend paid for his house. Prices were rising quite quickly at the time. He also runs the risk of getting rumbled for the two years of rates that he evaded. If it's any consolation, a house up the road from me has offers above the RV on it as its RV is quite low compared with some other houses on the street. The house will find its price no matter what the RV is.

I think Stranmillis is the most mixed area of the city and it's a very good area. We wanted to buy there but it is very expensive and we could only afford something small. It's very poorly served by buses which I think is a downside. We've lived in Finaghy for about 10 years. The houses on Finaghy Road North tend to be cheaper than those on F.R South. There are some lovely houses in the area behind Creightons garage. The village grew during the 1930s so lots of the houses have character, are well built and can have generous gardens. It has great transport links being close to the Lisburn Road which has loads of buses, the train and the motorway. It's close to the Lisburn Road (our posh neighbours) so there are plenty of good restaurants etc. I think where we live is mixed but it's hard to know! We considered Rosetta and Ormeau when we were buying. There's a few lovely streets off Sunnyside street which are worth checking out.

Unfortunately we all view houses that we suspect aren't right but we want to be sure. You need to be in a house to see is the third bedroom too small, how private is the garden, how much work needs to be done etc. Some people go on house over area, some people go for area over the house and some people don't know which is most important for them so they view a range of things. When we viewed houses I realised that big gardens set my pulse racing and the size of the house wasn't as important. I realised that I would compromise on the area to get a bigger house and garden. I hope the viewing goes okay. If your house is well priced you should still be getting a good number of viewings - a few every week.

I went to the HSBC online calculator and got an AIP that I could have printed off. I wasn't asked for any personal details. All the AIP is about is seeing what you could borrow based on your income and outgoings. The EA just wants to know that you could, in theory, borrow enough money to buy the house.

Hi Binchy Good luck with selling. There are buyers out there - we were house hunting after Christmas and everything we went to see had viewers crawling all over it. The houses were all selling at around RV, or less if work was required.

If you were in the FTB price category an EA probably could b.s. some youngster into thinking your house is the bees knees. At 200k you are looking at a hardened second time buyer who sees beyond the vases of flowers and pot pourri and is wiser about spending their money. You can try giving an EA extra money to sell and I'm sure they'll happily take it but I don't see where they can magic buyers from. If the price is too high then people will not buy, no matter how much the EA hounds them. To sell quick you must sell low. Price it below all the comparable houses and you'll be sale agreed within a fortnight.

I assume you have children. They seem to knock a huge whack off what they will lend if you have dependents.

He's an estate agent. It doesn't matter what he says.

The DCLG is based on mortgage completions so it is more backward looking than the Halifax and Nationwide. Their info comes from the CML so it is more reliable but also more out-of-date. The UU data is EA-based so it may be a mix of completions and sale agreeds. Does anyone know?

Yes, I accept that some subsets will have more data than others. The lower end sales data will be more accurate than higher end sales because of volume. Overall though, the data for any of the subsets is unreliable. You can't look at a region because of huge variations in house types and you can't look at house types becuase of huge variations between (and within) regions. You pointed to the result of this inaccuracy. Only a fool would think that house prices in South Belfast dropped by 25% last quarter and bounced back by the same this quarter. In reality, the data set is so small that one or two sales that differ from the 'average' sale will skew the data.