How to get a property report

A property report can give you an estimate of a property’s value, which can be important to know whether you’re buying or selling. Free property reports are available from RateCity to provide the information you need to make smarter financial decisions.

What is a property report? 

A property report is a summary of important information about a piece of real estate, whether that’s a house, a unit or townhouse, a piece of vacant land, or a commercial property.   

Information often contained in a property report often includes:

• Basic details of the property e.g. its size, age, number of bedrooms etc.
• Sale and/or rental history
• Recent sales of similar properties nearby
• Details of the local area, such as recent sale/rental statistics and trends, and average days on market

Most property reports will also include a property value estimate, automatically generated based on the available information about the property. This estimate can often be quite broad, and may range between a lower and a higher estimate.

The accuracy of this estimate will depend on how much information is available to help generate it. For example, if you ordered a report on a house that’s never been listed for sale or rent before, and is located in an area that’s predominantly units, the accuracy of the property value estimate may be relatively low.

How can you use a property report?

Property reports can be helpful to Australians who are buying or selling homes or investment properties, as they can provide a useful price benchmark when setting an asking price, making an offer, planning a budget or negotiating.

A property report can also be a useful tool for a homeowner considering refinancing, as it can help them estimate their available equity, which is the current value of the property minus the outstanding mortgage principal. Knowing your equity can help you determine whether you can refinance your loan without requiring Lender’s Mortgage Insurance (LMI), or if you can use your extra equity as security to borrow more.

If your property report includes rental information, this can be useful for investors seeking to know how much they can expect to receive in rental income from the property.

Is a property report the same as a valuation?

The value estimate included in a property report is not the same as a formal property valuation. While a formal valuation is conducted by a professional valuer, a value estimate is computer-generated using available property data.

Professional valuations are required when a borrower applies for a mortgage or refinances a home loan, to help determine just how much money the lender is lending compared to the value of the property. If this Loan to Value Ratio (LVR) comes back short, the borrower’s application may be declined.

While a professional valuer may visit a property in person to inspect the premises as part of a valuation, they may instead choose to conduct a desktop valuation if there’s enough data available about the property and the local area to do so. This may sound similar to a computer-generated property value estimate, but a professional valuer has the qualifications and expertise to consider all of the necessary factors to make a more accurate valuation, and they are legally responsible for their findings.

Where can you get a property report?

Property reports are generated using information from real estate data companies, who may also offer access to this data. Property reports may also be offered by real estate agencies, mortgage brokers and comparison websites like RateCity.

All you need to do to get a free property report is to provide some basic information about yourself and the property you’re interested in. This will typically provide you with the basic details of the property and a value estimate. For more detailed information, you may need to pay a fee for access to more exclusive data.

As for a formal property valuation, this is often organised as part of an application for a home loan or a refinance by your lender, who may pass on the valuer’s fee to you, though you may be able to negotiate this. You can also choose to have your own independent professional valuation conducted, though you’ll need to cover the valuer’s fee yourself.

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