Hogarfax vs doing it yourself on official sites

Every piece of information in a Hogarfax report is public and free. You could gather it yourself. The honest question is not "is it free somewhere else?" — it is — but "how much does it cost you to gather it, know what to look for and read it correctly before you sign?". This is the no-spin comparison between doing it yourself across five official websites and paying 24.90 € to have it aggregated.

There is no paid competitor that packages risks, regulation, surroundings and price into a single report. Hogarfax's real competitor is "free, but scattered across five government websites", each with its own search tool, jargon and format. Let's go through it source by source.

What you would have to check yourself, site by site

• SNCZI (MITECO) — flooding: gives you the flood-zone map by return period, but you have to locate your plot in the viewer and understand what T10, T100 and T500 mean.
• Nuclear Safety Council — radon: publishes the radon potential map by municipality, without cross-referencing your address or telling you what to do with the figure.
• IGN / NCSE-02 — seismic risk: the standard assigns a basic acceleration per municipality; you have to find it in the regulation and translate the number into real risk.
• Strategic noise maps: they exist for major infrastructure, in different regional or municipal viewers, with Lden/Lnight levels you need to know how to read.
• SIU — land classification: the Urban Information System shows whether land is urban, developable or non-developable, in yet another viewer.
• Electronic Cadastre — plot data: floor area, use, age and cadastral reference, but with no risk interpretation whatsoever.

The hidden cost of doing it for free

Doing it yourself does not cost money, it costs something else: the time to open five or six different viewers, the prior knowledge to know those sources exist and where they are, and the judgement to interpret the technical jargon. And in the end you do not have a single document: you have six open tabs, no PDF to take to the negotiation and no cross-referencing between the figures.

What Hogarfax adds for 24.90 €

• Aggregation: it brings flood, radon, seismic, noise, land use, surroundings and price into a single report, from an address or cadastral reference.
• Buyer-friendly translation: each figure comes explained — what it means and why it matters — not as an isolated number.
• Downloadable PDF: a document you can keep, share with your partner or take to the negotiation.
• A single payment: 24.90 €, no subscription, with a satisfaction guarantee.

When it is worth doing it yourself and when it is not

If you only want to check a single figure for one property and you already know how to navigate the SNCZI viewer, do it yourself: it is free and legitimate. Hogarfax pays off when you are comparing several properties, when you do not have time to learn six official tools, or when you want a single, well-judged document before making an offer. We do not compete with the official sources: we rely on them and save you the work of gathering them.