I've been doing some research into property prices and rents. Anyone, who's done this in the past knows how frustrating it can be to get any accurate sales data without subscribing to an expensive service.

Yesterday I came across this site. house.ksou.cn/

I've been addicted to it for the last two days. I did a traceroute on the site and it's hosted in China. Looks like it's some sort of scraper that collects and stores historic sales and rental data for all Australian suburbs. Don't know what the story is behind it but it seems that it may have been created to assist Chinese people investing in Australia.

The suburb profile link is also pretty handy, it links census data to suburbs and even allows you to even compare suburbs.

The next time anyone else is doing this, you can remember this post.

I found a couple of other sites that do slightly different things that are also free:

www.oldlistings.com.au/ similar to house.ksou.cn but not nearly as detailed.
suburbprice.com handy for looking at number of days on market and price reductions.

If I was to score myself a bargain, I'd be doing my research first and finding a property that seems good value and making an offer the first week or negotiating with the owner of a property that has been on the market for a long time, that may have some price reductions. I'm guessing that if a property has been on the market for a long time there may be something either wrong with it or may not have been marketed properly.

Adolph, I just did a quick search on my street (house.ksou.cn/ ) and a couple of houses that were bought/sold in the past 10 months aren't listed, so who knows how much else is unaccounted for.

Buster fin said...
Adolph, I just did a quick search on my street (house.ksou.cn/ ) and a couple of houses that were bought/sold in the past 10 months aren't listed, so who knows how much else is unaccounted for.

Don't know about WA but in Vic many properties when sold the price is undisclosed, so obviously they don't/can't get reported. Their site must just scrape the weekend sales results and stores that info. The scraper can only be as good as what gets reported. I haven't compared it to paid services, but it seems the best out there - better than my weekend sales results - which often doesn't mention the number of the street.

Here's another site that is useful: sqmresearch.com.au/ shows vacancy rates and stock in market for particular suburbs.

I'd be dubious about using a site based in China, for no other reason than there are plenty of local information sources.

Price disclosure is interesting. Basically a price is not disclosed if the seller does not want it to be (scared of money!) and/or if the selling agent convinces the seller not to disclose it (sold under estimate)

Either way, any real estate agent can get the price via their RPData subscription, so if you really want to know prices, buy your local real estate agent some beers...

great find! I just checked 4 properties that ive been to the auctions for in the last few months and all are spot on. (including our house)

just having a read of property selling prices in the area we're looking in at the moment. very interesting considering one of the properties says it sold for almost 50k LESS than the reale state agent told me after I called up to inquire about the auction

Victor B said...
Adolf

Have you ever considered taking up kitesurfing? You seem to have the right IQ and necessary Critical Thinking skills.

I hear Petermac33 is considering it...

You two would be awesome!!!!!!!

Oh no just realised this is my 111 post. 1+1+1=3!

Come to think of it, yes I have. Fantastic weather here in Melbourne - best summer I can ever remember, but too windy for me to surf so I've been cycling for a couple of hours every day along our foreshore. I see them having an absolute ball.

You are right, I should take it up.

So you reckon I'd fit in ok - I don't like getting injured, but fit in well with irrational people?

Oh, and thanks for spelling my name correctly, most people put a "ph" in there for some reason.