Why is my rateable value different to what agents say?

Set the two numbers apart first

The rateable value exists to divide up the rates bill. The salesperson's figure is an estimate of what buyers would pay now. How each number is arrived at is worth reading once, and then the useful work is all in the evidence behind the estimate.

What to ask

• Which sales is this built on. Ask for the addresses, not a summary. Rule 10.2 of the Client Care Rules requires a written appraisal to be supported by comparable information on sales of similar land in similar locations.
• When did each one sell. The sale date tells you how much market movement sits between that sale and today.
• Why is each one comparable to mine. Land and floor area, title, condition, aspect, and the street itself.
• Which sales pull the number up, and which pull it down. That is where the judgement in the figure actually sits.
• What is missing. Where there is no directly comparable or semi comparable sales data, rule 10.3 requires the licensee to explain that to you in writing.

Which sales count

Recent enough that the market has not moved underneath them. Close enough that the same buyers would have considered both houses. Similar enough in size, title, age and condition that the differences can be described rather than waved away.

A sale from a year ago on the other side of the suburb is not evidence about your house, whatever number it carried. Neither is an asking price: a house listed at a figure tells you what somebody hoped for, and only a settled sale tells you what a buyer paid.

When the two numbers are far apart

Well above the rateable value is not by itself a problem, and neither is well below. The question is the same either way: which sales carry the difference.

• The estimate sits well above. Check that the sales behind it are genuinely like your property, and whether the council record has simply never caught up with work you have done.
• The estimate sits well below. Ask what in the evidence is holding it there. Condition, title, something on the council record, or movement in the market since the revaluation date.
• Two salespeople, two numbers. Compare the lists of sales rather than the headline figures. If one list is thinner, older or further away than the others, that is the thing to ask about.

Buyers look the rateable value up, so expect it to come up at an open home and expect to be asked about any gap. The answer that works is the evidence, given plainly.