Methodology
Acreright brings scattered UK open data into one honest, sourced report per local area in England. This page explains exactly how each headline is computed, what powers it, and where it stops being reliable — because a figure you can't check is a figure you can't trust.
Principles
- Honest by default. Every figure shows its source, date and coverage. Where the data runs out we say "not enough data" rather than show false confidence.
- We aggregate, we don't own. Everything is already-public open data, credited on the attribution page. We add structure and honesty, not ownership.
- Coverage is live and expanding across England — the current list is the sitemap, never a hard-coded claim.
- Nothing is a valuation or advice. Estimates are labelled indicative; area-level checks are not a formal property search.
The "good to live" score
The score is a transparent heuristic, not a black box and not advice. Each scored theme earns a verdict tone from its own data, worth fixed points:
| Verdict | Points |
|---|---|
| Good (green) | 90 |
| Neutral | 70 |
| Caution (amber) | 55 |
| Watch (red) | 30 |
The score is the weighted average of those points across the scored themes, rescaled to 0–100 and labelled Excellent (≥80), Good (≥66), Mixed (≥52) or Worth a look. You can re-weight it to your own priorities (e.g. schools, commute, affordability) and the number recomputes live. Purely informational themes — who lives here (census), education, housing tenure, work, health & disability, planning and self-reported wellbeing — are shown but not scored, because they describe an area rather than rank it.
Verdict tiles
Each theme gets a plain-English verdict from its own figure against sensible thresholds or the benchmark of the areas we cover (e.g. £/m² vs the covered-area average). Every tile expands to a card carrying the exact number, its source and its date. For a sub-district area (neighbourhood or postcode sector), some figures are only published at local-authority level — those are shown but clearly badged "district-level (name)" so an inherited figure is never passed off as the neighbourhood's own.
Concierge shortlist
The concierge turns a plain-English request ("4-bed near a good grammar under £1m, 40 min to London") into a shortlist. A model parses the request into constraints; the data does the ranking — every area is scored against your budget, commute, schools and priorities using the same stored, sourced figures the reports show. Areas that don't fit are dropped or flagged (over budget / over commute); we don't invent matches, and each card links to the full sourced report.
Investment (buy-to-let) maths
The Investment Finder ranks covered areas for a property you describe. Purchase price comes from Land Registry Price Paid medians (by property type where there are enough sales, else all-property); rent from ONS private-rental figures. From those it computes, transparently:
- Stamp duty (SDLT, incl. the additional-property surcharge), mortgage cost (interest-only or repayment), and running costs (management, voids, maintenance, insurance, service charge, fees);
- Gross and net yield, monthly cashflow, cash-on-cash return, and the lender interest-cover ratio (ICR) against a stress rate; corporation tax when held in a company;
- 5-year capital-growth context from the UK House Price Index.
Value estimates are comparable-led (local £/m² × floor area) and always labelled "not a valuation". Every input is a number you can trace back to its source.
Sources & freshness
Headlines are drawn from official UK open data — HM Land Registry & EPC (prices), ONS Census (demographics), police.uk (crime), Ofsted/DfE (schools), NHS/OHID/CQC (health), the Environment Agency & Defra (environment), the English Indices of Deprivation, Ofcom (broadband), National Rail/OpenStreetMap (transport), and local-authority sources (planning & council tax). Each figure carries its own date; datasets refresh on their own cadence. Full credits are on the attribution page.
Honest limits
- Estimates are indicative, not valuations; the "buying here" checks are area-level signals, not a formal conveyancing search.
- Some figures are only available at local-authority level and inherited down to neighbourhoods — always badged as such.
- A few datasets carry an older vintage (e.g. the rail timetable) — the date on each figure is the honest guide.
- Coverage is expanding; an area we don't cover yet isn't a judgement on it.