“WELCOME TO the monthly Mouseprice newsletter about your local property market,” reads the e-mail from the popular British website mouseprice.com which trawls the UK land registry to provide homebuyers – or the just plain nosy – with comprehensive and recent information about house prices.
“We try to be the first to tell you about what has sold recently in your area, homes for sale nearby, discounted property and much more.”
A table, it continues, “lists the most recent transactions recorded by land registry near you.
“For more details, simply click on the property you are interested in. To see all the land registry data for this postcode, click here . . .” It goes on to give market highs and lows in the area, relating local to national house price trends.
And this all because one of us idly looked up some information a while back about a house we used to live in.
UK data protection laws allow this free flow of information. Meanwhile, apart from the now rare public auction, Irish housebuyers are largely in the dark about what has sold, when and for how much.
Will the new expert group on house prices being set up by our Government in the republic of secrecy change this anytime soon? Watch this space . . .
