Problems with Rightmove

paulconnor88

Hi everyone,

New to this forum and wondering if anyone else finds the experience of using Rightmove as a buyer really sub-par?

Their model works on estate agents paying for listings so I find the search results are always optimised for what the agent is trying to sell me vs what's right for me to buy.

I'd love to be able to look search properties based on things like cost per sq ft, the amount of renovation work that might be required, as well as more info about the local area.

What problems do you experience with property search sites like Rightmove?

MobileSaver

paulconnor88 said:

I'd love to be able to look search properties based on things like cost per sq ft, the amount of renovation work that might be required, as well as more info about the local area.

Cost per sq ft may be useful to a minority of people but it could so easily be manipulated that I'm not sure it would be worth worrying about in practice. How on earth could anyone reliably and consistently quantify renovation work that might be required? Info about the local area is already available from a myriad of sources, I'm not sure what benefit it would be for Rightmove to duplicate this info.

I think you're looking for a solution to problems that don't really exist for the vast majority of house buyers.

user1977

How would cost per sq ft work when there's no requirement or common practice for residential properties to be measured in the first place?

How would you quantify "amount of renovation work required"?

Scotbot

I agree with the OP on cost per sq foot. It is common place to quote it overseas and easy to calculate from the floor plan.

The other thing that irritates me is lack of orientation info, which way the house faces. Most agents don't put the right address into RM so it is hard to work it out especially with modern estates where the street view looks the same. I usually check if it has been sold previously, from this you can get the house number and stick it into Google maps.

None of the stats are available either which when you are selling is really annoying although the EA can get them

mexican_dave

All Rightmove are doing is aggregating estate agents data into one place, making life easier all round. What's not to like?
In the old days you had to walk down the high street look in agents windows and ask to go on mailing lists, trees were chopped down to make paper.
If that's not good enough for you, then maybe you have a great business idea? You are a business "disrupter" - suggest you take your plan to Dragons Den on BBC TV!

born_again

Most people will just use area they are looking at & their price range as search criteria.

JaneMartin_2

I find the Rightmove filters cover most things. They put one or two properties at the top of the search each time, but apart from that you can search by Newest on the site or by Price and everything you've fitered for comes up. Amount of renovation needed is subjective so that wouldn't work as a filter. I wish it was possible to filter by age of property.

DullGreyGuy

paulconnor88 said:

I'd love to be able to look search properties based on things like cost per sq ft, the amount of renovation work that might be required, as well as more info about the local area.

What problems do you experience with property search sites like Rightmove?

I'd like m2 to be easier to find/filter on but that would also require rules to ensure consistent measuring (eg are internal garages included or excluded, heigh restricted areas included or not, are outbuildings space included etc) 

Price per sq ft I'm not interested in, big houses with terrible layouts will have a lower price by area and are not necessarily better value than a property with a much better layout and efficient use of space. 

Renovation cost isn't viable... in our flat we thought the kitchen had to go urgently after moving in but a friend who visited said how great the kitchen was... so do you include that or not? If you include it do they assume you are buying from DIY Kitchens with Beko appliances or Roundhouse with SubZero appliances? 

Most do include information on the local area so what's missing? There are many companies that sell socio-economic analysis etc for any given postcode/address but you have to know how to understand it and decide how to react to it. For example where we live in central London some data providers literally go to individual developments and if you go down the road you see buildings alternating between top 1% in the UK and bottom 5% so do you want to see that your potential home is in a 1% development or see that it neighbours a bottom 5%? Would you rather see that your £2m flat is in the top 20% when considering the street as a whole? Lies, lies, damned lies and statistics!

propertyrental

mexican_dave said:

All Rightmove are doing is aggregating estate agents data into one place, making life easier all round. What's not to like?
In the old days you had to walk down the high street look in agents windows and ask to go on mailing lists, trees were chopped down to make paper.
If that's not good enough for you, then maybe you have a great business idea? You are a business "disrupter" - suggest you take your plan to Dragons Den on BBC TV!

and back then EAs would hand you a bundle of print-outs of properties they thought (hoped) would be of interest to you.

What was written on these marketting brochures for each property was much the same as what Rightmove now conveniently provides from the comfort of your own laptop.

london21

You can get an idea from the floor plan and searching the EPC data which has size of the property https://www.gov.uk/find-energy-certificate

Rightmove not so detailed to tell you cost per sq ft currently. 

Nearlyold

Still have the property details from the first place I bought in 1980  -  it's just 1murky black and white photo-copied sheet of A4.  Still got my first mortgage offer docs too, pointing out there would be a large loan extra interest charge of 0.25% p.a. as I was  borrowing over £15,000.