Property snooping hots up

THOUSANDS of people are expected to swamp house price information websites tomorrow when the Land Registry releases the latest batch of data. A new service on the Government website allows people to snoop on the price their neighbours have paid for property since 2000, at a cost of £2 a time. Tomorrow will see the launch of data for November and December 2004.

The Land Registry has also allowed private firms to buy the information and sell it on for less. Some providers are offering the service for free, hoping to make money by selling other services.

The Mail on Sunday and This is Money revealed this week how 500,000 people a day were logging on to nethouseprices.com, a site launched only a month ago. Today the company admitted that the coverage had caused a huge influx of web users causing technical problems. 'We can cope easily with 10,000 users at one time but on Sunday there were many more people trying to access and use the site probably because of a major article in the Mail on Sunday,' the company said.

Nethouseprices.com also announced today that it would keep its house price data free indefinitely - and from later this week, users will not even need to register. 'I believe we can make enough money to pay for the service through advertising and sponsorship,' said 49-year-old boss Steve Dunnett.

The website will also offer a more advanced service for professional such as estate agents at £100 a year.

However, the large volumes of internet traffic are still taking their toll on the website. It was barely accessible for most of Tuesday. Dennett, said the firm was working to improve capacity.

The Land Registry is charging third parties £2,750 a year for a licence to sell its information plus a percentage. Dennett estimates nethouseprices spends around £13,000 a year on prices for England and Wales.

Other sites to offer the service include myhouseprice, which is charging £1 per property.

The Land Registry, a Government operation, but which is self-funded, said its service offered additional information, revealing the property owner and which mortgage lender they borrowed money from. For an extra £2, users can also download a property's boundaries.

The service has been available since May 2003 as part of a trial but will be launched officially next Monday. 'Demand has grown considerably,' a spokeswoman said. 'We've had the pilot scheme to test the site would be robust. We're confident that it will be.'

The boom in property prices in recent years has not only spawned a plethora of housebuying programmes - the spread of property information websites has been equally prolific.

Hometrack.co.uk was one of the first private websites to develop detailed local property information, collating house price feedback from estate agents. It has made no move into the new individual house price service as yet. The Land Registry has offered information on average house prices for local areas for several years.