Viral upstarts Us vs Th3m have found a shortcut to the heart of every British person with a game about house prices. No, really, it’s fun, go play it. (I scored 75 per cent). The game looks up the prices of ten houses sold in June 2013 from the land registry, and then gives you a Google Street View image of the property and the town (or London borough) it’s in. From there, you just have to guess how much it is, to the nearest thousand pounds.
Two thoughts:
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Most people playing the game are commenting on one thing and one thing only: London house prices are unreal. For the most part, you can play the game with a rough rule of thumb: a slightly dingy looking semi is around £150,000; scale up or down based on that. But if you get too comfortable, and don’t check the location, you’ll find yourself being out by a factor of ten, because that dingy looking semi was actually round the corner from Harrods and sold for £1.5m.
Look at it from the other way, as someone who just about knows what London prices are, and Paweł Morski provides the strategy:
Divide by 3 for midlands, 5 for North.
You may think that “London is expensive” isn’t big news, but it seems like a lot of people who thought they knew the score are being caught out.
- But I have a feeling that when the sticker-shock wears off, the other thing people will start chatting about is that the internet lets you do things which are kinda creepy. You did, after all, just find out the prices of ten strangers’ houses based on photos taken by a car which has shot every street in Britain. Are people actually fully used to that reality? Or have we just not yet caught up with the new normal?
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