Answered plainly
Questions and answers
The questions cottage buyers ask us, answered plainly.
- Are the sold prices real?
- Yes. The sold-price explorer reads HM Land Registry Price Paid data live, with the publisher’s own dates and prices, under the Open Government Licence. The index figures on the home page are the Land Registry’s UK House Price Index for July 2026.
- Are the cottages real?
- No. Every listing, auction lot, and shortlist is a sample record wearing a Sample badge. Real inventory arrives at go-live; until then the searches demonstrate the service, not the stock.
- Does anything cost money here?
- No. Nothing is charged anywhere in this demonstration. Fees that will exist at go-live are shown as proposals, labelled as proposals.
- Can I search by thatch, beams, or an open hearth?
- That is the point of the desk: the Cottage Finder matches on character features, not keywords — the workaround buyers report using on the big portals.
- What rules apply if the cottage is a second home?
- The second-home rules guide covers the furnished-holiday-letting abolition, council-tax premiums across Britain, and the registration schemes, each with its source.
- What about listed cottages?
- The listed-cottage guide explains the grades, the official record, and consent — and our listings carry their grade where the record has one.
- What do auction buyers pay?
- The auctions page shows the buyer-fee benchmarks as the auctioneers publish them: iamsold’s £349 including-VAT Buyer Information Pack plus reservation fee, and Allsop’s £2,000 including-VAT buyer’s fee on residential lots of £10,000 or more.
- Who runs this site?
- The operator block is not yet confirmed — the about page and the legal pages say so plainly, and nothing here claims otherwise.
- What happens at go-live?
- Sample records are replaced with real inventory, the Sample badges come off, the backend and registrations connect, and the contact routes go live. The site is built so that go-live needs no further building.