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GettingBored

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    Number of available properties in my area has exploded since the COVID buying mania

    in House prices and the economy

    Posted

    I monitor a few areas daily and here are some observations:

    • Huge increase in supply compared to a year ago (there is data to back this up)
    • Good properties are selling despite insane prices and new records are being set in certain streets/areas
    • Properties come on the market, sit there for a couple of months without reductions and are then removed from sale (the "I'd rather keep it than give it away" crowd)
    • Seeing a lot of properties that are ex-rentals and/or large homes that need a lot of working doing on them
    • Lots of reductions
    • Relisting of the same property to circumvent price history - happens all the time

    And finally, a personal anecdote... my landlord is interested in selling up and has given me first dibs. I'm interested as I love the house but a mortgage would be 2.5x my current rent so I'm staying put for now (they are happy to keep going with our current arrangement for the next 1-2 years). We shall see how it plays out...

    Is property Log down ?

    in House prices and the economy

    Posted

    I thought I'd reply to a few points in this thread.

    • I don't like the fact I have to charge some users for using it but I really had no option. I spent so much of my own money (£1000's) keeping it going and I couldn't justify it anymore.
    • Believe it or not, only about 1% of users pay but I'm covering costs now which is what matters.
    • It might seem complicated but the concept is very simple. The server 'logs' a property's price each time it is viewed via the extension, and if it's different the next time I can show the old price. I don't know how many bedrooms it has etc, I literally only know the price.
    • There are a couple of ads here and there, I am trialing them. Some users don't see them (including subscribers). I'll probably get rid of them as they don't really make anything.
    • I'm well aware that the Chrome store rating for the extension has taken a battering because of the introduction of subscriptions. It was bound to happen and there are other, free alternatives out there. Most installs are from word of mouth (between 100-200 per day).
    • I am super thankful to everyone on this forum who started using it back in the early days before it had full UK coverage. I am also grateful to those few people on here (you know who you are) who donated and kept the servers going before I introduced the subscription model.

    One last thing, if you didn't know I added the ability to 'link' price histories together. This means that if an EA takes a property down and relists it with a different price I can show it. If you see examples of this you can submit them via the website.

    Example: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/132263453#/?channel=RES_BUY

    Thanks 🙂

    Property marketing

    in House prices and the economy

    Posted

    7 minutes ago, bvrial said:

    You should do some work with consensus maybe perhaps have a DB trigger that increments a number to kind of "verify" seen prices, I was messing around and posted some bogus prices to your API and they stuck. 

    Why do that and not tell me? I know you've told me now but that's not the point.

    Property marketing

    in House prices and the economy

    Posted

    I am the developer of Property Log, the extension that shows price change history. You're seeing blurred prices because you've used up the generous free allowance. Only a small percentage of users ever hit the free usage limit, and you're one of them. Most subscribers are EA's or those who work in the industry who use Rightmove all day...

    I really didn't want to charge users for using it but I spent £1000's of own money paying for servers when it was 100% free and I could no longer justify it. I've also spent 1000's of hours writing the extension, the backend and all the tools that are involved with running and maintaining it.

    All you had to do was click on the "Why is the price history blurred?" link to see the reasons for it.

    Noticable increase in volume and number of reductions...Crashy Crashy

    in House prices and the economy

    Posted

    It's worth mentioning that the total daily reductions on Rightmove is now always around 2500 (Mon - Fri). A couple of months ago it was 1750 - 2000.

    Anecdotally, I've been tracking the village where I live for the best part of 15 years and there has never been so many properties for sale as of right now. A year ago anything that came on would be snapped up immediately, now there are a couple of reduced properties amongst the available stock.

    Interesting times.

    Property Log

    in House prices and the economy

    Posted

    1 hour ago, TheCountOfNowhere said:

    I assume you mean, new instructions in london/cornwall were down 7%.

    No, initial asking prices!

    The problem with RM data is that it can be heavily skewed, take these figures with a pinch of salt. I need to start posting some charts again, for some regions (the ones I use for sentiment) the price is rolling over and heading south.

    Property Log

    in House prices and the economy

    Posted

    On 18/06/2021 at 22:38, Voice of Doom said:

    Bump.

    I subscribed a couple of weeks or so ago. Hope it's going OK @GettingBored

     

    Thank you for your support :)

    2 hours ago, TheCountOfNowhere said:

    @GettingBoredAre you there ?

    GB told me last night on twitter that Initial asking prices had fallen 1% in June.

    Can you confirm this GB ?

    Any other info ?

    Yes, I'm here! Rarely come on this forum these days so thank you for the nudge on Twitter.

    Average initial asking price on Rightmove for June 2021 was £399,433, a drop of 1.1%. New instructions were up 0.8%.

    Regional data is quite interesting. London was down 7%, Cornwall down 2.9%.

    Property Log

    in House prices and the economy

    Posted

    On 08/05/2021 at 17:07, danlee74 said:

    Just wondering if the subscription model was generating better incomes towards your quite substantial investment of money and time?  As mentioned by @FTB-house-hunter above it is a great tool, and I will also donate a decent wedge if I ever get to a position of buying a decent house at a decent price (which is why we are all here, after all).

    Hi Dan,

    Sorry for not replying sooner, I don't visit the forum much these days. Yes, I am just about breaking even with it now (running costs only). I still feel bad about introducing the subscription model but I really had no choice. Thanks for the continued support, I really appreciate it.

    24 minutes ago, GreenDevil said:

    Catching up on some house prices and it seems that the new subcription model ie £1.99 a month is blurring out prices but not doubt collecting the prices. Which is a shame as i was happy to spend my time trawling the web to get property logs prices up to date, but not for a price of 1.99 per month. So im afraid ive removed the extension.

    Does anyone know of another similar way to get price history?

    Thanks,

    No problem, thanks for using it in the past. I'm sorry you don't think it's worth £1.99 per month. There are other extensions available which are free :)

    Property Log

    in House prices and the economy

    Posted

    11 hours ago, FTB-house-hunter said:

    Well worth the £1.99 if you ask me.  I noticed the first day things changed, I had blurred prices on the second page, but recently I can look at all 8ish pages for my search area, and see all the data.  I imagine you have tweaked things a little in order to work out a balance?  What ever happens in the future, I am glad you made the add on.  It really is such a helpful tool and will earn a decent donation from me should I (ever) manage to afford a decent house, at a decent price!

    Thanks for the kind words. Yes, I've had to tweak it a couple of times to find the right balance as ultimately there are so many ways to do it.

    There is no point in going nuclear as the extension relies on users to find the prices, with no users then the price history won't be as up to date (or could be missing) in some places. The current user base provides pretty good coverage at the moment and I don't want to jeopardise that hence the generous allowance.

    Property Log

    in House prices and the economy

    Posted

    1 minute ago, FTB-house-hunter said:

    How many properties can you view before the prices become blurred?  I think they system is a much better solution then ads or a hefty monthly fee!

    It's calculated based on average usage over a rolling period, I'd rather not disclose the actual calculation but it's generous IMO. 95% of users won't be restricted and will never see blurred prices.

    I can't go down the ads route, it breaks Google's TOS (plus I dislike them anyway). I think £1.99 a month is pretty cheap but very few people have subscribed. My uninstall rate has shot up massively and a lot of people are unhappy about it but at the end of the day I'm not a charity. Over the last 3 years I've sunk £3000+ of my own money into running it and hundreds (maybe even thousands) of hours maintaining it.

    Property Log

    in House prices and the economy

    Posted · Edited by GettingBored

    @Roman Roady This is normal, the zeroes are there to stop people from copying and pasting the price history into a text editor to reveal the actual price.

    I had to implement the blurring of prices for some users (the top 5%) as I am trying to break even on server costs.

    I'll drop you a PM in a moment as I want to give you free unrestricted access as you are keeping the price drop thread alive.

    Halifax Mar '21

    in House prices and the economy

    Posted

    A year ago we all thought house prices would fall dramatically and become affordable, 12 months on and prices are up 6.5%.

    Buying a house a year ago would have been a massive risk that any sensible person would have avoided. With all the money printing, props and the "economic boom" predicted when lockdown ends I can only see prices going up even more :( 

     

    Property Log

    in House prices and the economy

    Posted

    4 hours ago, FTB-house-hunter said:

    The extension is a great tool.  I know you probably don't want to, but if donations are not bring in enough to cover the server costs etc, I would go with adverts to help.

    Thanks, glad you find it useful. Using ads is a bit of a grey area unfortunately and Google have very strict guidelines on using them hence why I've avoided this route (plus I don't like them anyway).

    1 hour ago, moonriver said:

    Sorry to hear this GB, I know how much work you put into this.

    Good luck with your continued work on the Chrome extension though. 

    I know you say FM's here do contibute to that, so do continue to post here now and again, it should help serve as a reminder to myself and other FM's to continue to contribute towards your excellent chrome extension.

    Thanks moonriver. I have disabled all donation messages in the Chrome extension, changed the page on my website and have instead gone down a different route. It'll be highly unpopular with a lot of users but it's the only way I can keep the extension going.

    If a user exceeds a certain number of API requests per month they'll need to subscribe. I don't feel comfortable accepting donations anymore when I'm going to be charging some users. Let's hope this new system will allow me to break even!

    I know I keep saying it but thank you to everyone who has donated over the last 3 years, without you it wouldn't exist.

    I will have to accept the fact that a LOT of people won't want to subscribe and will probably uninstall the extension but c'est la vie.

    Property Log

    in House prices and the economy

    Posted

    Update - April 4th 2021

    I'm sorry to announce that Property Log Pro will not be accepting any new registrations. All Pro users have been refunded and emailed. Those who did sign up can still log in and use it until the end of the month.

    The Pro tool I created is just not appealing to 99.9% of my users and instead I am going to focus on the Chrome extension.

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