Sold price history
Asking prices tell you what the seller hopes. HM Land Registry tells you what buyers actually paid. HouseLens puts that record on every Rightmove and Zoopla listing, so you can judge the price without opening a single new tab.
Every home you see on Rightmove carries a number the seller and agent chose together, and sellers routinely list above what they would accept. The only prices that reflect what the market actually paid are registered sales: when a purchase completes in England and Wales, the price paid is recorded by HM Land Registry and published as open data. That record goes back to 1995, which means for most homes you can see every sale for around three decades: what it went for, when, and how long each owner held it.
Put next to an asking price, the history answers the questions that matter. Is the asking price a stretch over what the street achieves? Did the current owner buy two years ago and add forty per cent for a coat of paint? Has the home changed hands every three years, and if so, why? None of that is visible in the listing photos.
The free panel shows registered sales in the area around the listing: what sold, when, and for how much, with price per square metre so different homes compare fairly. Because Lite and Pro verify the exact address against the EPC register, they can also show the property's own complete history. It is the difference between "homes on this road go for about £400k" and "this home last sold for £312,500 in 2019".
If you are researching an area rather than one listing, our free sold prices by town and street pages list registered sales straight from HM Land Registry, alongside local market data and how quickly homes sell.
HM Land Registry's own price paid search on GOV.UK is free and authoritative, if slower to work with: you search address by address, and you will need the full address the portals hide. That last point is most of the reason overlays exist.
A few patterns come up again and again once you can see the record:
Short hold, big markup. Bought recently, listed well above the purchase price. Sometimes it is a genuine renovation; sometimes it is optimism. The gap tells you how hard to look at what was actually done, and how much room there is to negotiate.
The long hold. A home last sold decades ago will often list at a round number the owners feel rather than a price the street supports. Nearby registered sales are your anchor, not the asking price.
Frequent sales. A home that changes hands every few years is worth a direct question at the viewing: why did the last three owners leave? Noise, neighbours, damp and parking wars do not photograph.
The area moved, the price moved more. HouseLens shows how local sold prices have shifted since the property's last sale, so you can tell whether the asking price reflects the market or outruns it. Sellers often list up to ten per cent above what they would accept; the record helps you decide what the home is worth to you, which is the number that matters at offer time.
Price Paid Data covers open-market sales in England and Wales. Some transfers never appear: certain new-build first registrations, transfers between family members, court-ordered transfers and portfolio deals are excluded, so a property can occasionally show gaps. Sales also take a few weeks to a few months to be registered after completion, so a sale agreed last month will not be in the record yet. HouseLens refreshes its Land Registry data monthly and shows sales as the registry records them.
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