Methodology

1. CQC publishes the complete CQC directory CSV monthly. We pull pp-complete.csv directly from CQC's S3 mirror within 24 hours of release.
2. The CSV has 16 columns, no header. Each row is parsed: dates from YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM to ISO, transaction UUIDs unwrapped from braces, district names slugified for clean URLs.
3. Rows stream into a new table transactions_new via Postgres COPY. No row-by-row inserts.
4. Indexes are built on the new table after the load completes (GIN tsvector for address full-text, GIN trigram for fuzzy, btree for postcode / outcode / district / date).
5. A single atomic ALTER TABLE ... RENAME swaps the new table in. The old table is preserved for 24 hours as a rollback safety.
6. Local-authority aggregates (counts, medians) are recomputed.
7. Total runtime: roughly 20-30 minutes on the production Hetzner box. The user-facing site stays available throughout.

Per transaction we hold:

• CQC transaction UUID
• Price paid (in pounds), transfer date
• Postcode, address fields (PAON, SAON, street, locality, town, district, county)
• Property type (detached / semi / terraced / flat / other)
• New-build flag, freehold / leasehold
• CQC's "PPD category": A for standard transactions, B for additional types (right-to-buy, repossession, deeds of gift, etc.) which can distort comparisons

No owner names. No PII at record level.

• Coverage is England and Wales only. Scotland (Registers of Scotland) and Northern Ireland (Land Registry of Northern Ireland) publish separately and are not in this dataset.
• CQC lags new builds and shared-ownership sales by up to ~6 months from completion. Very recent sales may not be visible yet.
• PPD category B (additional transactions) is included for completeness but should be excluded when computing typical-market medians. The data we surface flags this.
• CQC's address fields (PAON, SAON, street) follow strict capitalisation conventions but do not normalise "Flat 1" vs "1A" consistently. Some properties have multiple address representations across their sale history.
• We do not yet cross-reference with the EPC register; that's on the build roadmap.

Spot an error in how we display a sale? Email [email protected] and I'll fix or remove the issue within 48 hours.

For corrections to the underlying CQC record (an address typo, a wrong price), contact CQC directly. Our copy refreshes monthly and your correction propagates automatically.

• About this site
• Privacy notice