Is there a better web site to search properties to buy? 3 May at 3:11PM in House Buying, Renting & Selling 40 replies 1.8K views

pieroabcd

Hi,
is there a web site in the UK  that permits  to search properties filtering by a richer set of criteria? For example: by area, by tenure, by year of construction, excluding boats, by number of toilets, with garage and/or parking space, by station vicinity, by distance from a fixed point.
So far my experience with property websites has been quite sad. They permit to set only a tiny amount of filters.
Thanks.

AdrianC

Even the filters they do give are unreliable, because they rely on EAs correctly flagging the attributes.

RM is as good as you're going to get. There are other portals, but they have fewer properties on them.

getmore4less

I find keywords can help but will miss many.

Draw works to include/exclude bits.

To do it to the level you want would require a lot of work from the sites and those loading the data.

When EA can't even get basics like terrace and semi right the chances or other fine filters would be a disaster.

user1977

pieroabcd said:

For example: by area, by tenure, by year of construction, excluding boats, by number of toilets, with garage and/or parking space, by station vicinity, by distance from a fixed point.

These can all be done relatively easily on Rightmove - admittedly you might have to draw your own search boundaries, but I've done that both for "within x minutes walk of stations A or B" and "within catchment areas of schools C and D". It also has "parking" as a filter.

Surely by the time you've used the filters available there's not going to be that many results to look through, especially once you've assessed everything currently on the market and are just looking at the new arrivals?

lincroft1710

pieroabcd said:

excluding boats, 

Are there that many houseboats for sale in a location that they need to be filtered out.


To be blunt, your expectations are totally unrealistic.

getmore4less

I did a search for another thread around  Brighton got a few floaters.

thriftytracey

On The Market isn't very good not much criteria to search.  Yes, there are houses on there that don't appear on RM.  Not sure why.  Oh I can guess - it is cheaper for the EA.

WoozieSioux_tse

You could maybe try writing your own advert for a property on Boomin. This is free. You write what you are looking for, rough guide to price you'd like to pay and if anyone registers wishing to sell with those criteria, you can be matched up. You do need to specify a very small search area though- up to 5 streets, I believe. 

No estate agents are involved because the sale adverts are written by the sellers. You'd hope they'd know what their property is!

WoozieSioux_tse

Forgot to mention, once the introduction is made, the seller lets you know who they will use to market the property (i.e estate agent) and then you go from there, but at least you've had a hopefully better description of the property to start off with, from someone who actually knows about the place...

AdrianC

WoozieSioux_tse said:

You could maybe try writing your own advert for a property on Boomin. 

Never heard of it.

Which prompts a little test...

How many properties are listed in this county...?

Rightmove - 889 properties
OTM - 726
Zoopla - 648
PrimeLocation - 648
Boomin - 377

Now, if we were to prefer one platform over another because of filtering capabilities...

Thrugelmir

You'd be better off registering with local EA's and let them inform you when properties are listed that meet your very specific criteria. When purchasing property, compromise is a commonly used term.