Booli, the Swedish search engine for residential listings, continues to create brilliant functionality for buyers (maybe not for the brokers and sellers). Their latest step is to offer residential comparable sales for free.

The comparables are listed with information on:

price

date

name on buyer and seller

address

real estate broker

difference compared to asking price

Below is an example from a small village in Sweden. The red symbols are comparable sales; the blue are listings.

How it works
The information is purchased from the Swedish Land Register and updated every night (I suppose, since new data is released daily). The service does only include single family houses (not apartments).

The price for sold apartments is not available through the Land Register. However, it is manually collected through the company Mäklarstatistik, which is owned by Mäklarsamfundet (The Association of Swedish Real Estate Agents ) and the two largest brokerage firms in Sweden; Fastighetsbyrån och Svensk Fastighetsförmedling. The data is not published for free, but available through products from Värderingsdata.

First with national coverage
The idea to provide this data for free is not new. The local newspaper MittI started with this service in Stockholm earlier this year, but Booli is first with national coverage. It could also be seen as a response to the newly introduced service from Boligan.se who displays differences on asking price.

Introduction of a new business model
Information on comparable sales has been available for many years through PC or Client/Server products from companies like Ljungqvist, Värderingsdata and Svefa. However, those services have been for business clients and attached with a fee.

Two of them have provided free versions like Villvärdet (see example) from Ljungqvist and BoPriset from Värderingsdata (see below for an example). However, none of them are as comprehensive or user friendly as Booli's version. And none of them also displays the listings. On the other hand, Booli is the first to bring in advertisement (which is part of the business model).

More info
Is found at the Booli blog and from coverage in mainstream media like Ny Teknik and Veckans Affärer.