I can’t help myself, if I see a new home hit the market where I live, I’m straight on Rightmove, Zoopla or which ever of my phone apps just happens to be closest to my finger. I want to know how much it is on for, what accommodation it has and what it looks like inside.

If you like I am a covert nosy neighbour, I don’t twitch the curtains or peer over the garden fence but I have seen inside the house, looked at the floor layout and even taken a peek inside the bathroom. All that whilst sat down with a cup of coffee and I never even stepped out of my house, am I alone doing this? Not a chance, I could probably fill a large stadium with the “Nosy Neighbour Club” and still have a waiting list to get in.

The property portals allow us to gauge the price of our own homes without the need of calling an expert in, useful if your are not selling; but if you are about to go on the market then you can’t ignore them.

Before you even pick up the phone to book a valuation on your home you need to be ready, you need to have done your research or “homework” if you like. I will be guiding you through a few steps to help you get an approximate figure for your home, this will stop you being over excited when the agent gives their price or underwhelmed, leaving you to focus on the other matters you will need to discuss with them.

I am going to use Rightmove to run through this demonstration, I have nothing against the other portals, this page just happened to be open on my screen as I was helping a neighbour with the marketing of their house and that is the page they typed in.

1. Type your postcode into the search bar and press return (it automatically picks “For Sale” for you.
2. Before you ‘click’ the Find properties button you may want to select a larger search radius and also tick the include under offer, sold STC . Now go ahead and ‘click’ Find properties.
3. Once you have looked through those and started to generate an idea on price, look down the right hand column and look for Sold House Prices underneath that will be your post code, go ahead and click away.
4. You should now be looking at a list of properties that have had a completed sale in your post code (or again you can extend the search area) over a number of years. Although you can’t see all the information on the properties there is enough there to help you.

About 95% of the properties that you have just viewed will have photographs, prices and floor plans and it’s the floor plans I want you to take a look at. In some cases these will give you the total square footage of the house you’re looking at and the price. If a house is on the market for £300,000 and it is 1195 square feet, then that house has been valued at just over £251 per square foot.

As I said, it is just an approximate value and does not take into account many things inside your home, but it does put you on a stable footing for when the agent does come round, allowing you to concentrate on the whole meeting and getting all the important questions answered (those will be in future posts).