OzHomevalue is a Realestate.com.au owned website for property vendors providing them with sales data information in relation to the suburb where the vendor’s property is located. From their homepage:
OzHomeValue provides a comprehensive property report to help find the value of your home. Try our easy to use, obligation free system and receive your FREE property report.
Well, it is not entirely obligation free given after a vendor fills in the form and receives a free property report, their contact details are then sold to local agents who contact the vendor regarding a appraisal.
But what’s more interesting about OzHomevalue is the sold data provided in the free property report. These property reports showcase recently sold properties and a Price Range for each property in the suburb where the vendor’s property is located. It’s this Price Range which is provided for sold properties which raises the question as to whether a property vendor’s privacy is being breached. Given most vendors explicitly request their agents do not publish sold prices, why then do all of these prices appear?
Given Ozhomevalue is owned by Realestate.com.au then a reasonable assumption is that REA are providing Ozhomesvalue with this sold data. As the sold dates of the properties in the report are between April 4 and April 12, 2011 than this sold data has not been sourced from the Valuers Generals office (because settlement has not occurred). Therefore more likley than not, this sold data is what has been reported on Realestate.com.au by agents once a property has sold. What’s interesting is, if you look at the sold properties on Realestate.com.au which are listed in the Ozhomevalue property report, you will see the price (for most properties) is not displayed on Realestate.com.au but is displayed on Ozhomevalue.com.au.
A perfect example of this is if you click on the sample property report on the Ozhomevalue.com.au website (after this post was published they updated their report to change the results but you can see a ozhomevalue_sample_report.)
You will see there are 12 recently sold properties in the report. Now if you search the sold properties on Realestate.com.au you will see that 11 out of the 12 properties do not have the sold price displayed. Below are the 12 properties in the report. Although the report outlines the property prices I have substituted the price with $X to maintain the vendor’s privacy.
- 197-199 Castlereagh Street SYDNEY – $X (REA No Price)*
- 612/2 York Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA NO Price)*
- 3701/129 Harrington Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA NO Price)*
- 324/298 – 300 Sussex Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA NO Price)
- 1307/98 Gloucester Street, THE ROCKS – $X (REA NO Price)
- 1809/183 Kent Street, SYDNEY – $525,000 (REA Price $525,000)
- 303/420 Pitt Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA NO Price)
- 2007/98 Gloucester Street, THE ROCKS – $X (REA NO Price)*
- 2007/98 Gloucester Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA NO Price)*
- 1409/168 Kent Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA No Price)*
- 129 Harrington Street, SYDNEY – $X (REA NO Price)*
- 129 Harrington Street, THE ROCKS – $X (REA NO Price)*
*I decided to cross reference the 12 properties against the Australian Property Monitors database and the properties marked with * appeared in APM. All of these properties have the price withheld in APM.
Ozhomevalue refer to this price as a Price Range but make no reference to what this Price Range figure means. If it is the sold price of the property, then vendors (along with agents) would be outraged and should have every right to demand the sold price removed immediately.
After further examination it appears that Homeguru.com.au another Realestate.com.au owned company is displaying exactly the same sold property data as what Ozhomevalue does in a similar Sales Reports. However, instead of displaying the price as ‘Price Range’ Homeguru.com.au simply has it displayed as Price.
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