Sale prices and rents of offices, shops and industrial premises are not. Many owners don’t even publish “asking prices” either, turning the purchase of a property into a “dutch auction”.

The only way a business can get an idea of what a property is worth is through a Valuation, that may cost around £500.

Lack of data, though, means that the Valuation can easily be out by more than 20%. This is because most valuations are made up of two components: Market Rent and Yield. Market Rent is based on current rental data, and yield based on historic rental data. If both components are over estimated by 10%, the Valuation is out 20%.

So businesses have no easy or reliable way of determining what a fair price of a property is and, until we have a National Register of Rental Data and Sales Prices, they never will.

Our solution has been to develop an online tool that utilises 1.7 million freely available independent rental valuations, the National Non-Domestic Rating List.

While adjustments need to be made to them, they are based on a vast private database of rental evidence, and are generally shown to be only 5% out. As an assessment of Market Rent, it is the most reliable available

These valuations have been carried out every 5 years for the past 20 years, producing a huge databank of historical rental data and how markets have moved. This is precisely the data needed to properly assess Yield.

So this data source can, potentially, be used to improve the accuracy of capital valuations. However a Valuation Surveyor doesn’t have access to it, nor fully understands it or how to use it. Only a Rating Surveyor is in the position. 

There is also the not insignificant task of taking 8 million pieces of rental valuation data, some of it good and some of it bad, and turning into information needed for formal valuations.

Nonetheless, once that task is done, as cost of providing the “base” of the Valuation is paid for by the state, the Valuation itself can be provided very cheaply.

It took 2 years for a specialist Rating Firm to “crunch the numbers”, discarding 6 million pieces of data, restructuring the rest amongst 5080 “property markets”.

We have now generated an “RPI style” index for each of these 5080 markets showing rental movements in five year periods since 1988. These should be invaluable to anyone undertaking a formal valuation or anyone considering purchasing for occupation or investment.

This data has also been taken one stage further to provide “estimates” of current rental and capital value on the 1.1 million properties within those 5080 markets.

So not only is the historic market data available but also an independent estimate of capital value and rental data

Both the index and the capital and rental estimates, together with other useful information, are included in our reports which can be downloaded instantly at a cost of only £10 each.

Our estimates may provide a different value to that put forward in “asking prices” or formal Valuations but, because they are based on “better data”, are wholly objective and consistent, we believe they will be a fairer representation of the value of the property.

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