Property creator data sources: sales records, planning checks and employee pay

For property creator cost planning, separate the evidence needed for a property claim from the price of producing the content. Record the research task, its source and its acceptance criteria before requesting a quote. Keep employee-pay context separate from commissioned fees, and ask for each charge to be tied to an agreed deliverable.

Give each source a defined purpose

Start with the question the content needs to answer. Use sales records for the relevant sales evidence, planning datasets for a defined planning check, and employee earnings only for pay context. Record the purpose before collecting results, so an interesting figure does not become an unrelated claim.

Carry these distinctions into a property-media budget, with a description of the work beside each proposed charge. Review the relevant property data sources before choosing an evidence route. Ask the creator to identify which research tasks are included in the quote and which need separate agreement.

Scope sales research with Price Paid Data

HM Land Registry's Price Paid Data includes information on property sales in England and Wales that were sold for value and lodged for registration. Define the intended content claim before searching, then retain the relevant result and the date of the check alongside that claim.

Sales that have not been lodged with HM Land Registry, and sales that were not for value, are excluded. Price Paid Data is updated on the 20th working day of each month. Keep those exclusions and the update schedule beside your research notes rather than treating a search as an unrestricted sales record.

For an agent's video brief, specify the research output you want accepted: a supported sentence, a checked comparison or a record for review. Place that output within the property-media operating workflow. Ask who will check the wording and what evidence they should retain before approving publication.

Keep planning results and coverage limits together

The Planning Data API gives access to over 100 planning and housing datasets for England through a single interface. Name the dataset needed for the content task, then agree what the research output should contain. Avoid commissioning an undefined promise to check everything about a property.

Planning Data API entities include a name, dataset and start-date, and a property can be queried using its UPRN. Retain those details with the result you intend to use. Make the query record specific enough for another reviewer to understand what was checked without relying on the creator's memory.

The planning applications specification is in development, and local planning authorities are not currently required to share application data to it. Data coverage varies by area. An absence of results does not mean that no constraints exist, so keep that limitation attached to the result and any proposed content wording.

If a planning result cannot support the intended sentence, pause that sentence rather than soften the research record. Agree whether further verification belongs within the commission or needs separate approval. Record the unresolved question, the person responsible for checking it and the evidence needed to close the task.

Use employee earnings as context, not a creator rate

Median gross annual earnings for full-time employees were £39,039 in April 2025. Keep that ONS employee-pay figure in a context field, not a creator-fee column. Preserve its population and period if you use it to frame a staffing discussion, and describe the commissioned work separately.

The ASHE annual pay figures capture pay in employee jobs for employees who have been in the job for a year or more. Full-time means employees working more than 30 paid hours per week, or 25 or more for the teaching professions. Retain those definitions with the figure.

Do not relabel the employee statistic as a freelance day rate, project fee or licence charge. For property-media benchmark research, test whether the population and unit match the decision. For property-media pricing models, request comparable scope and acceptance terms rather than treating different deliverables as interchangeable purchases.

Approve the research scope before the spend

Read the research scope against the proposed commission before accepting a total. Use your property creator commercial contracts review to connect deliverables, evidence work and approval responsibilities. Ask for a written quote that identifies inclusions, exclusions and the basis of each charge, rather than leaving research effort implicit.

Revisit the scope if the property claim, evidence route or requested output changes. Keep the changed instruction with the revised quote and approval record. Accept the research task only when its result and limitations are clear enough to support the agreed content, rather than because a dataset was searched.