Land Registry data for November 2020

I’ve uploaded the latest house sales data from the Land Registry to my website.

Website updates

I always forget to announce when new features have been added to the site, so here’s a few things that have been added over the last few months

• Find places – A new page to find places and other points of interest in the UK (driven by the OS Open Names dataset)
• Added the latest usage data for British stations
• Added football stadiums in Northern Ireland

If you find any issues, let me know

Land Registry property sales data October 2020

I’ve uploaded the October 2020 Land Registry property sales data for England and Wales to my website. I really can’t think of anything to say about it!

Postcode data for November 2020

I’ve uploaded the latest UK postcode data from the ONS to my website. I have checked that it looks OK but I often miss something so let me know if you spot anything amiss

England and Wales house price data update

The latest update from the Land Registry for September 2020 is now live on my site. Data still seems to be slow in coming through so the average sale price and number of sales is still volatile. I’m guessing the numbers from the summer are now complete which show prices flatlining and sales volumes much lower than normal

Land Registry data for August 2020

The latest property data for England and Wales is now on my website. The number of sales has certainly fallen over the last few months, even though I’ve been hearing of a property boom. And I’m not seeing much evidence of prices rising much either

Land Registry data for July 2020

The latest house price data from the Land Registry is now on my website. Sales are still way down but it’s too early to see what affect the Stamp Duty holiday has had, I’d imagine sales will be up over the coming months

UK postcode data for August 2020

I’ve uploaded the latest postcode data from the ONS to my website. I’ve run my usual sanity checks and it all looks OK, but do let me know if you spot any anomalies

House price data June 2020

I’ve uploaded the Land Registry data for June 2020 to my website. I reported a couple of months ago that there had been 7 sales in April. This has now been revised up to over 20,000 sales. Whilst not as terrible as the initial figures suggested, that’s still much lower activity than we’ve been seeing over the last few years. And although there’s been a marked drop in the prices paid, those prices haven’t affected the annual averages yet.

Property sales May 2020

I’ve uploaded the latest Land Registry property data to my site. There’s a continued lack of sales being completed, although last month’s figures have been revised upwards from 7 to 279 sales. That is still dramatically lower than the usual number of sales

If you’re wondering why the current average sale price has dropped significantly but the annual change in price has increased, this is due to the tiny number of sales happening, the sales dropping out of the other end are making a much bigger difference to the stats.

UK postcode data for May 2020

The ONS have published their latest postcode data which is now uploaded to my site. As ever, I’ve run some sanity checks (codes for administrative areas have changed yet again!) and everything looks to be correct. Let me know if you see anything amiss

(lack of) property sales April 2020

What happens to property sales in the middle of a pandemic? Perhaps unsurprisingly they fall off a cliff. According to the Land Registry, there were 7 sales in England and Wales in April, although that will probably go up a little as the data comes in for future months. With such a small number of sales, the price statistics are fairly meaningless

Land Registry data for March 2020

In the before days, people bought and sold houses. I’ve uploaded the data for England and Wales from March to my website. Since the data is never complete for the previous month, it’s difficult to see at this point the effect of the lockdown, but I assume it will become more obvious next month.

Land Registry data for February 2020

It may feel like a lifetime ago, but in the not too distant past people were able to buy and sell houses. I’ve uploaded the latest Land Registry data to my website which is fairly uninteresting, with prices still ticking up slowly. I imagine next month’s data will look very different.

Property data for January 2020

I’ve uploaded the latest Land Registry data for England and Wales to my website, covering sales up to January 2020. Prices continue to creep up, number of sales are hovering around the level they’ve been at since 2013 (when Help To Buy was introduced)

UK postcode data for February 2020

I’ve uploaded the latest postcode data from the ONS to my website. I’ve run the usual sanity checks but do let me know if you spot anything amiss

Moving from a Garmin 810 to a Garmin 830

About 5 years ago, I decided I needed to buy myself a dedicated bike computer, rather than the phone I’d been using up to that point. Primarily this was so I could ride for further since my phone generally died after a couple of hours of constant screen and GPS action. I went for the Garmin 810.

In a sense the 810 was a step back from a phone with its tiny screen and washed out colours, but I grew to love its turn by turn navigation, even if it was also the cause of my major annoyance with it, the occasional crash that only seemed to happen when using the turn by turn navigation.

But recently the USB socket packed in, my computer no longer recognised the Garmin when I plugged it in. Although I could still download ride data via my phone’s Bluetooth connection, I now had no way of uploading new routes to the device, so decided to treat myself with a 830. Those crashes had put me off Garmin devices somewhat but when I compared what was available from other companies, I came to the conclusion the 830 still looked like the best choice.

So this is a mini review of how the world of Garmin has moved on in the last 5 years and whether an upgrade is worth it.

On first sight, the 830 looks fairly similar to the 810 with almost exactly the same dimensions. The buttons have moved from the top to the front of the device which makes it rather difficult to press them if the device is mounted on your stem. Because of this, I’ve switched to using the out front bracket which is thankfully included with the device.

It’s when you turn it on, you start to notice the differences. The screen has a much higher resolution and the colours are much improved over the 810. The software should be familiar to anyone who has used an 810, but there have been many small tweaks and changes. Moving around the screens is very responsive and I’ve had no problems when wearing gloves.

I remember when I bought the 810, only a very basic base map was provided. I could buy a proper map from Garmin or try to figure out how to download OSM maps and install them. I went for OSM maps initially but eventually bought Garmin maps in the vain hope it would fix the crashes I was experiencing. Now the 830 comes with its own maps

Integration with my phone has moved on since the 810. I can now get routes directly on to the Garmin via the Strava app, rather than having to download from Strava and upload to the bike computer. I even get notifications from my phone appearing on the Garmin. Admittedly I’m generally on my bike to get away from these kind of things, so this may not be something I leave enabled, but I can imagine it would be useful when trying to meet up with someone.

I was always a big fan of turn by turn navigation. This has been improved so that when I go off route, the 830 will recalculate the route, even if this often just means telling me to make a U-turn. I even get told about sharp corners ahead. it can get a bit confused if a route covers the same bit of road more than once, trying to send me the wrong way, but it figures it out fairly quickly.

I’ve had the 830 for just over a month and ridden just over 300 miles. In that time I’ve had zero crashes. I wouldn’t like to say the software reliability problems of the past are gone (since crashes seemed to happen more frequently on longer rides which I’ve not really been doing due to the winter months) but I’m feeling more confident than I did with the 810.

I think the only complaint I have about the 830 is a problem I have with most bike computers, the price. I have a Garmin sat-nav for our car which provides pretty much the same functionality as the 830, but for a quarter of the price. There are differences in the software and the 830 integrates with heart rate monitors and power meters, but can such a vast difference in price be justified? I guess if this keeps going for five years, then maybe it can. Either way, I’ve been very impressed after my first month

Land Registry data December 2019

I’ve uploaded the latest property sales data for England and Wales to my website. Nothing of note to report, annual house price inflation is stuck at 1%, sales seem to be holding steady.