How we source every figure

The datasets

Sold prices (the sold-price explorer)

Real transaction records fetched live from HM Land Registry's Price Paid service when you look up a postcode. Nothing is cached between visits.

Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0 — attribution shown beside every result.

Freshness: Live, on your action.

UK House Price Index figures (home page, region pages, the Cottage Price Index)

A dated snapshot of the HPI for the UK and the cottage counties (2026-08 period; county figures fetched 2026-10-31).

Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0, reproduced unaltered with attribution.

Freshness: Quarterly, with the fetch date printed beside every figure.

Listed-building checks

Historic England's National Heritage List for England (NHLE), queried live from their open FeatureServer.

Licence: Open Government Licence v3.0.

Freshness: Live, on the listing pages that show it.

Purchase and running-cost figures in the guides

Published industry figures (for example RICS survey-fee ranges, conveyancing fee ranges, auctioneer buyer fees) shown with the publisher named and the date we opened the source.

Licence: Quoted with attribution; the publisher's own wording is linked, not copied.

Freshness: Re-verified each time a guide is edited; the date is on the page.

Demonstration listings and lots

The sample cottages and auction lots that stand in for real inventory until go-live. Every one carries a Sample badge; nothing about them is real except the price-context tools around them.

Licence: Not applicable — demonstration data, labelled as such.

Freshness: Replaced by real inventory at go-live, then removed from the demonstration set.

The rules the desk follows

1. Every material figure carries its source and its date on the page where it appears.
2. Where a number cannot be honestly stated — fuel prices, thatch insurance, per-cottage indices — the page says so and points to the quote or survey that produces the real one.
3. Demonstration data is badged as demonstration; real figures are never mixed into it.
4. Open Government Licence attributions are kept intact, because the data is Crown copyright and the licence says so.
5. No invented claims about the company, its customers, or its standing — ever.

Corrections

If a figure here is wrong or stale, write to Contact@BrandingSME.com with the page and the number. Corrections are fixed first and logged here second, with the date. The log currently stands empty — the first entry will appear below when one is issued.

No corrections have been issued as of 5 October 2026.

Where the figures live

• The Cottage Price Index — the quarterly county digest.
• The sold-price explorer — live transactions by postcode.
• What a cottage really costs — the purchase-side figures with sources.
• The privacy notice — what the site stores and what leaves the browser.