Recommendations for house search not limited by area

TripleH

Not the same situation, but we found our home by looking along train lines away from where I needed to commute to and worked our way out from the train station.

We worked out what was a comfortable commute time during me as a further way of narrowing our lists.

Obviously my criteria won't apply, but the approach might work?

YoungBlueEyes

I did something sort of similar, except it was distance to the coast rather than train station.  I knew I wanted a medium/large market town fairly close to the coast (but not at the coast). So i took a map and started mentally knocking off areas that didn't fit/did fit but I couldn't afford.

Suprisingly effective.

Sapindus

Emerion said:

it’s not that niche at all @Sapindus.  Detached. double garage with a  workshop or space for one. Plus  what would nowadays be called a large garden, but 20 years ago, would have been called small-medium-sized. Pleasant area, anything from a quiet part of a market town to countryside but not isolated - some neighbours & 1 mile or less to at least one small shop. But not a huge house because there are 2 of us. It’s the outside space that rules out an awful lot of areas nowadays. New houses are obviously out. Also would prefer a 2, 3 or small 4 bed house at most. If you want the garage & the space you have to have a big 4 bed or bigger. Also, developers have built on many gardens attached to houses built in the 80’s and earlier when gardens were bigger. We currently have a lot of land, and are isolated. It’s gorgeous, but becoming a burden. So we just want room for hobbies in a pleasant area. We’ve  been looking in a number of counties on Rightmove, mainly Shropshire & Powys, and must scroll past more than 99% of the houses that they send us without needing to open them to look closer. Of the remaining tiny percentage, probably 1 in 20 is worth discussing. 

Sorry, did I say niche?  I don't think I did.  I was just interested.  Thank you for elaborating.

Sounds like you need a house swap.  I can imagine people with a workshop and a medium sized garden who would like to step up to "a lot of land"... me for one.

Emerion

canaldumidi said:

Prime location. Use a wide search ara eg a county and add whatever filter words you need. The filters are far better than rightmove.

Trouble is not all properties are listed on PL. There again, not all are on RM though I think RM has more listings.

After a number of emails to Prime location/Zoopla, it turns out that the filter words aren’t much use. If you ask for a detached house, with a phrase of “double garage”, you get everything with either of these. i.e semi detached with double garages and detached with single garage. This obviously increases the number of irrelevant houses rather than reducing them. I thought this must be a mistake on my part or theirs, but apparently not. I’m amazed to be honest. 

Emerion

badger09 said:

Emerion said:

We want to move in the near - medium term. Unlike most house buyers, we aren’t tied to a particular area, so Rightmove hasn’t proved very useful to us. It’s all about search areas, and not many filters. You can use key words in your search, but they are simplistic and you can’t save them to an automatic search. After looking for 2 years with multiple searches saved on Rightmove, we’ve seen half a dozen possibilities at most. This could go on forever at this rate. In my dreams, I could set up a search for pretty much the whole of Southern Britain, but with multiple search terms and filters. I know that doesn’t exist, but does anyone have any tips for when you want a particular type of property, but not in a particular area? 

Have you watched the Channel 4 TV show “Perfect House Secret Location”? If not, I suggest you do. It’s an interesting concept. 

Can’t remember if there’s the usual blurb at the end about ‘if you want to take part…’ but might be worth a shot. 

I’m in Shropshire, not far from Shrewsbury, in a village which probably fits your location description.  What is your budget? 

£550k, although with the market still so fluid, both our house and the ones we’re looking at could be fetching more (or drastically less!) within weeks.