Are you a property Poirot? House price snooping is a growing trend
We're a nation obsessed with property porn, renovations and the housing market - yet, somehow, it's still seen as incredibly rude to ask someone how much they paid for their house. But after all, why would you need to ask when it's so easy to find out for yourself online?
New research from property site Zoopla has found out that 59% of Brits admit to looking up how much people they know have paid for their home. Nevertheless, we don't like to admit it - 65% of us would never let slip to the owner that we’d researched their home’s value.
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While we are liable to look up the homes of anyone we know, the findings show that we are most likely to check the pad price of our neighbours, friends and families.
Nevertheless, 11% of those surveyed said they had looked up what a colleague paid for their property, with three in ten even then making assumptions about their workmate's salary after finding out how much they paid out.
While most of us would admit to checking how much our neighbours spent on homes that our similar to ours, one in ten survey respondents even admitted to clocking the home value of a current or former partner - with a shady third of those admitting they then carried on dating someone who they wouldn't have otherwise, after discovering they owned a 'des res'!
On the flipside, a quarter then stopped dating someone after discovering the low value of their home.
So why are we so obsessed with playing Poirot on property websites? 18% of us say we're simply curious, and it's hard to resist when the information is so readily at our fingertips. But beware the green eyed property monster - 11% of those surveyed admitted to feeling jealous after looking up the value of someone’s property.
We're partly also, perhaps, attempting to gather knowledge so we can feel confident about pricing when putting our own home on the market, or when making an offer on another. In fact, nearly a quarter (23%) of those surveyed said they performed online snooping in order to get a better idea of what their own home was worth.
Plus, we still don't think we can just ask - only a fifth of those surveyed think it's acceptable to simply ask someone else what their home is worth.
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Tom Parker, Consumer Spokesperson at Zoopla, said: “Buttoned up Brits love talking about house prices – but for most, asking someone straight-up what they paid for their home is still considered a taboo. But how much a house sold for is publicly available information and is easy to source online.
Whether it's your boss, a friend or even a potential partner, it’s clear we want to know more about the homes they live in and will often treat them differently as a result."
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