Find a property
Timesaver’s guide to finding a property
Right now you are looking for a property, you are just about to enter a world of estate agents, property supplements, property websites, new home developments -so where do you start? What’s the difference between Rightmove and Your move, Propertyfinder and Find a property, isn’t there a Primelocation and a Fish4homes, what about Foxtons and Halifax?
Read the following guide to searching for property on the Internet you will save yourself so much time.
The facts. Finding estate agents
- There are around 14,000 Estate agent branches in the UK
- None are licensed although around 10,000 are members of the NAEA, the National Association of Estate Agents which ahs a code of practice and basically means they re more likely to be better practicing agents.
- Most Estate Agents have websites, however some still have a phobia about computers. A lot of Estate agent websites are pretty poorly designed and hard to locate on the internet.
- If you are moving locally you may well know your local estate agents as they advertise in your local paper and have offices and boards around locally.
How do you find the Estate agents?
This is where Property portals come in. You can search for agents on Yell.com or google and get some results, however it makes sense to use a property portal. However which one is best?
What are the good property portals?:-The UK property portal market explained
- The largest property website is Rightmove .It claims to have around 400,000 plus homes for sale across the country. It is owned by several large Estate Agent groups including The Halifax. However it does not have all the properties in every area. Why not? Because some smaller estate agencies and other groups do not like to spend money advertising with their competitors. Also the website is frustrating as it does not give the opportunity to clickthrough to the estate agents website. It is the Microsoft of property portals.
- Number 2 is fish4homes . This has a lot of property around 300,000 properties for sale but is not very well designed or easy to use. However you can click through to the agents website. This is owned by several regional newspaper groups in the UK, so this is why you will see lots of adverts for this in local newspapers. They also power around 70% of all the property searches on the UK’s regional press websites e.g. www.thisisplymouth.co.uk. They power the property search for MSN as well.
- Number 3 is Property finder Just bought by Mr. Murdoch of The Times and Sun, this is an interestingly designed website that is a bit unreliable and lacking in large property numbers around 200,000. They power the property search for a number of large websites like Yahoo, Wanadooa nd the Daily telegraph website.
- Number 4 is find a property which is very big in London and the southeast and has some nice functionality, is easy and basic to use. It has very little presence outside the southeast but it claims to have around 160,000 properties. This site is good for rentals. They are owned by the Daily mail group.
- Number 5 is primelocation that has been spending a lot of money on TV advertising. They are more focused at the top end expensive houses and claim that average property value is around £500,000. However they are going more mainstream. However they don’t have a lot of property around £150,000. Their strength is that they do have exclusive agents advertising on here like Hampton’s, Stags and other heavily branded “luxury” estate agents. They are owned by several of these large estate agent groups. Although recently they were also bought by the Daily Mail group.
- Number 6 is smart new homes which unsurpisingly a website dedicated to new homes and developments. This is owned by Trinity Mirror newspaper group and since they bought it in 2005 the website looks a bit clunky, but there are supposed ot be a lot of new home developments on here.
So in summary keep an eye on Rightmove, Propertyfinder and fish4homes . Make sure you use find a property, for London and south east searches.
Try primelocation, for upmarket property and for property from certain agents.
Property for sale privately
Increasingly due to the web more and more property is being sold privately. It can be so much cheaper to sell your home for example for £100 versus £4,000 in estate agent fees. There are loads of websites out there but only a handful that are any good. In fact most of them advertise their properties on the property portals such as fish4 and property finder.
The good ones are:- The Little house company and Property broker
Other property services on the Internet
Quite a good service includes estate angels which allows you to email all estate agents in the area – although figures suggest only 1 in 3 estate agents will respond as they tend to ignore emails.
Anyway we hope that our guide from inside the online property market helps reduce the time you are hunting for the perfect property. Remember to set up property alerts with these websites, so you can keep up to date. However once you know the area you would like to live in, strike up a rapport with the estate agent so that you hear about properties as soon as they go on the market.
