Quotable Value's website
Click-simple property reports _______________________________________________________ Price: downloadable reports range from free to $85 plus GST. Overall rating: 4.5 out of 5 Website: www.qv.co.nz
Monday, July 25th 2005, 11:40AM
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The more informed you are as a property investor the better decisions you make. Quotable Value's website QV.co.nz provides a plethora of online property reports that take much of the legwork and a fair chunk of the cost out of doing due diligence.
With a few clicks of the mouse, QV.co.nz allows you to find out:
• Capital value records of properties
• Records of property sales
• Historical sales and property information
• Information by address, valuation reference number, local authority or region
• Information through searches by floor area, construction type, property category, land area, capital value, local authority or regional council
• Listings of properties by comparative characteristics, such as size, capital value, property category, sales dates, and more.
You can also order Quotable Value's terrestrial valuation services online.
We were impressed with the sheer flexibility of the service. You're not just limited to searching for a list of sales in a particular area as the searches can be refined in many different ways to give you a clear vision of what's happening in a particular neighbourhood, suburb or town.
The data doesn't just include property information but also detailed demographic reports which enable investors to find out more about a particular neighbourhood or town if it's new to them. There's also a hazard report. Nor are you limited to residential searches; you can also search lifestyle, rural, commercial and industrial properties.
Registration was extremely simple and involves filling in a small number of boxes on one page. Once you've registered you're automatically taken to a page where you can begin searching.
Registering for the casual-user service is free. You pay per search and the cost ranges from nothing to $85 for a statistical report. The most popular reports, the E-Valuer and Local Sales reports, cost $29.95 and $14.95 (for up to 10 properties). You can even get AA Rewards points while using the system.
One thing we liked especially was the availability of sample reports, so that you can see what you get before committing your credit card to the deal. It's surprising how often the owners of websites don't think of simple things such as this.
The people at QV.co.nz also clearly understand that Internet users don't always think and behave in the same way and they've given you the option of typing in the street name and details you're looking for, or searching a map. Once you've clicked on an address, then you're given a price list for a variety of searches.
E-Valuer returns nearby comparable sales that must meet defined criteria, including building age, proximity, value etc. As well as property details and estimated value (including an estimate for the land value, improvements and chattels), rating value data, land area, floor area and construction details are also available. The Local Sales reports allow you to search all the sales within a certain radius of the property.
A new service offered by QV.co.nz is the Suburb Sales Notification service, which automatically notifies you each time a sale goes through in up to five suburbs over a three-month period. It costs nothing to sign up.
We also liked the fact that the information was sliced, diced and packaged for different users. For example, if you're buying there's a list of useful reports, likewise if you're selling. QV.co.nz has also taken the time to think what different categories of users might want, such as home-buyers, investors, developers, farmers and so on, and point them to the most useful data.
They've also added some helpful touches such as the option to have a PDF version of the report emailed to you for $1 plus GST. This type of extra touch is beneficial to those who lack technical savvy and wouldn't know how to save a report on their computer.
There is no need to pay a monthly subscription if you're only using the service from time to time. You can simply pay per use. However if you're going to be a regular user it makes sense to become a subscriber and pay less for each report. Subscribers pay a joining fee of $20 plus GST, then a monthly ex-GST amount of $30. This is not charged if you don't use the service in a particular month. When you do use the service the cost of your reports are deducted from the $30.
On the downside the only thing we found that we really didn't like was the lack of a simple price list. Finding the prices certainly isn't intuitive. You first need to click on the “introduction & free samples link” under “online reports”, and then scroll down to the list of “sample property reports and sample property market statistics”. You then need to scroll through the “sample lists” to find out current pricing. Whew! We only managed to figure that out by phoning QV to ask if there was a price list. We know it's free to register and you do finally see prices once you've done an address search and before it's too late. But we think QV would do itself and its customers some favours by making the cost of using the site much easier to find.
Other than that, we could only find minor frustrations. At one point we spent ages clicking on a map to zoom in to a particular address just to realise we needed to click on the “instructions” to figure out what to do next. But when we clicked back, the map reverted to the starting point.
In another case there was a link saying that a Hazard Report wasn't available for the property in question. When we clicked on the link we were taken to a sample Hazard Report – rather than an explanation of why it wasn't available.
QV.co.nz's main competitor is terranet: terranet.co.nz Contact: 0800 651 133 System requirements: • Internet access
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Verdict: No professional property investor should be without this or a similar service.
Pros: A wealth of information at the click of a mouse.
Cons: Prices not obvious.
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