Arguably the most essential aspect of selling your property is letting potential buyers know that your home is for sale in the first place. The same is true for buying or renting your dream home; you need to know what is out there on the market.
With 95% of home buyers and vendors heading online as their first port of call for locating properties to buy or agents to sell through, which are the top 5 websites for savvy home movers? We investigate.
Rightmove
The big hitter when it comes to property portals, chances are that you – like 80% of home buyers – have already used Rightmove. With over 100 million-page visits per month they are currently the market frontrunner when it comes to selling properties, offering property listings, information on house prices and links to local agents. Rightmove also offers a comprehensive house price index, showing local and national trends, and the recent where can I live tool, which shows you specific locations which will meet the budget and property criteria you set.
Since 2015, Rightmove has also been the exclusive portal partner of the London Evening Standard.
Zoopla
With over 50 million page visits per month to their website and mobile applications, Zoopla has been battling it out with Rightmove for the top spot in the online property market since Zoopla’s inception in 2008 (Rightmove was established in 2000).
Despite less page views, Zoopla is still a big player in the housing market. The portal offers really useful features which aren’t available via Rightmove such as an instant property valuation, a travel time tool for calculating the commute from a potential property and the option to define a search area on the map via their SmartMap, which means you can pinpoint the location of your dream home.
Zoopla also now owns other smaller, bespoke property portals like Prime Location and the Hometrack website, which offers key property market analysis.
The Agent Guide
When it comes to finding a local estate agent, head to the Agent Guide. With impartial data on estate agents that isn’t available anywhere else – such as how long on average a property will stay on the market with a particular agent – this site will help you make an informed decision on which agent to list your property with or assist with your search.
If stats are your thing, the website also drills down to give you the key, granular information about average house prices by property type e.g. the average property price of a 3-bedroom property in a specific town. This kind of information can be invaluable when it comes time to decide on an accurate asking price for your property.
Homeowners Alliance
In their own words, the Homeowners Alliance “champions the interests of Britain’s homeowners and aspiring homeowners, providing unbiased and practical advice as well as services you can trust whether you are buying, selling or owning your home.”
This includes advice from industry experts, step by step guides to the buying and selling process and the latest news and trends from the property market.
The Homeowners Alliance also helps you to find and compare homeowner/buyer services such as mortgage lenders, surveyors, conveyancers, insurance and removal companies and offers a very useful (and importantly very free!) instant property valuation tool and campaigns for change on various issues affecting the housing sector.
Data Shine
If where you live matters to you as much as the actual house you live in (and as Kirsty and Phil will attest, isn’t it all about location, location, location after all!) then Data Shine is a must visit.
Data Shine maps the data from the most recent census (2011 currently) and provides context around the results, showing various demographic data on the local population, health, housing, education, employment, travel and residency. The LQ (or Location Quotient) describes how far from the national average (LQ = 1) the measure is, giving you the ability to compare your local area (or the area you plan to move to) against national results. A fascinating read whether you are buying a house or not!
