Comparing two properties

Go to your shortlist and press Compare. The cards turn into a selection surface, you tap the two you are deciding between, and a bar at the bottom opens the comparison.

Two, not three. Three columns of figures on a phone is a table nobody can read, and “which of these two” is the shape the decision actually takes. If a third house is still in the running, compare it against the winner afterwards.

The comparison has its own address, so you can reload it, leave it open in a tab, or come back to it tomorrow. Both properties stay pinned to the top of the page as you scroll, so you never lose track of which column is which.

The page opens by saying, in words, what is actually different about these two houses. How much more one costs a month, which one is further from the place your week revolves around and by how long, which one you liked more when you stood in it, and whether you have overridden an outgoing on one of them.

Everything below that block is the same information shown rather than said. The order is deliberate: the sentences are what you would repeat to someone else, and the panels are what you check when you do not believe them.

Each property gets the same cost ring the property panel draws, with its true monthly total in the middle, so you can see at a glance whether two similar totals are made of the same things. A mortgage-heavy house and a bills-heavy house can land within a tenner of each other and are not the same proposition.

Under the rings, every figure that matters, in pairs: mortgage, council tax, your share, what you have left after housing, and what your partner has left after housing. The side this app would call better carries a small arrow and the gap in brackets, so you get the direction and the size of the difference without doing the subtraction. The arrow points the way the number itself goes, so a lower cost points down and a bigger leftover points up.

Your outgoings are the same wherever you live, so most of this panel is two identical columns. That is exactly why it is here. An outgoing can only differ between two properties because you overrode it on one of them, and an override is a figure you typed rather than one the app worked out.

Where you have overridden one, the figure it replaced sits struck through beside the one in force, so “why is this house sixty pounds more” answers itself. They are grouped by whose they are, yours then your partner’s then the ones you share, and the ones that match on both sides are folded away until you ask for them.

Two scores appear, and they are never mixed together. The suitability score is worked out from published figures and your finances. The vibe score is what you made of the place standing in it, from the checklist you set in your profile and fill in after a viewing, covered in reviewing a property.

Both are shown for each of you and, if you are linked, for the two of you together. Suitability differs between partners because your incomes and your places differ; vibe differs because you are two people.

Under the vibe scores, the checklist itself, question by question, with both of your answers on the same row. Two totals tell you which house you liked. The questions tell you what you liked about it, which is the thing left to weigh when the two totals land within a few points of each other, and it is where you find out you scored the kitchen five and your partner scored it two.

Every place you have saved is timed from both properties, and so is every place your partner has saved. Yours and theirs are kept apart and labelled, because you can both have saved a place called Work and they are not the same journey.

This is the panel that most often decides it. A house that takes nine minutes off your commute and adds twenty to your partner’s is a real trade, and it is invisible if you only ever look at your own map.

It will not tell you which house to buy. The app has a view on affordability and on how well a location fits the places you go, and it says so in the suitability score. It has no view on whether three bedrooms beats two, or whether the cheaper house is the better one, because two bedrooms may be exactly what you want and nobody would ever buy the dearer house if cheaper always won. Bedrooms, bathrooms, EPC band and council tax band are stated plainly and nothing marks a winner.

A comparison is also not shareable outside the app, unlike a shared property link. It is built from your income, your deposit and your saved places, so it would mean nothing to anyone who is not you.