How we arrive at a number
We do not start from an average price for your neighbourhood, nor from a square-metre-times-average-price formula. We look for real homes, similar to yours, on sale right now near you, and work from there. This is exactly what we do, with nothing left out.
1. We start from your home, with the floor area verified
You tell us the built area and we cross-check it against the Land Registry. If they match, we use yours; if they differ by more than 5%, we use the Land Registry figure because it is verifiable, and we say so in the result. We never automatically take the higher of the two.
2. We look for similar homes near you
We start on your own street and widen the radius (300, 500, 750, up to 1,000 metres) until we have enough comparables. We do not use the postcode — it can cover very different areas — but real distance on the map, bearing in mind that a motorway, a railway line or a large park separate genuinely different markets even when they look close on paper.
3. We discard what is not comparable
Out go new-builds if your home is second-hand (and the other way round), floor areas very different from yours, listings that have gone more than 8 months without a price cut, and withdrawn listings — which never count as a closed sale or as a live offer.
4. We weight each home by how similar it is to yours
Proximity, how old the listing is, floor area, condition, floor level, lift, outward or inward facing, terrace, parking and year of construction. The more different, the less it weighs — and if it is too far off, it is discarded. Transactions older than six months are adjusted to today's prices before comparing.
5. We give a range, and say how much confidence it carries
We calculate a weighted price per square metre and its median, and from there a likely range, not a bare number. Confidence (High, Medium or Low) depends on how many comparables there are, how close their prices are to each other, and how near and recent they are. We never show an invented confidence percentage. Market price and asking price are shown separately, with no automatic margin added.
6. When there is not enough data, we say so
If there are few active listings in your area, we also use real aggregated statistics for that same area, always stating which method was used — and that method never reaches "High" confidence, because it carries less detail than comparing home by home. And if even that is not enough, we do not invent a figure: we tell you, and we review it in person.
Asking price vs. real closing price
Listings show what is ASKED, not what is PAID. Where we have real closing prices (deeds), we compare them with asking prices in the same area, and the gap varies a great deal by neighbourhood: from 13% in prime areas to 42% in others. That is why we do not apply a blanket discount across Madrid — we calculate it area by area, and only comparing the same area on both sides.