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Your guide to house-hunting on the web
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There are plenty more web wonders to help you find and buy a home, from a new property search engine to the sites that will tell you how much homes have sold for.
One of these is a young upstart on the property website block. It’s called Globrix.com and it uses Google-style search engine technology to search all the property listings on the internet.
While it’s still at the beta or test stage, this site is definitely one to watch over the coming months if you’re house-hunting.
If you want to cut out the middleman, there are a number of sites where sellers pay a flat fee to advertise their properties – with no estate agents, and therefore no commission.
search smarter
While these sites generally offer far fewer properties for sale than the big estate agent-led portals, they can save you money: sellers may drop their price because they don’t have to pay commission.
MyPropertyForSale.co.uk and Houseweb.co.uk are probably the pick of the bunch.
Pay the right price
So you’ve found your dream home but you don’t want to pay more than the going rate. But what is the going rate?
Well, there are several sites that will tell you – although some of them will charge you for the privilege. These sites all source their figures from the Land Registry for England and Wales and/or from the registers in Scotland.
The Land Registry site will sell you information on who owns a property and how much they paid for it (if it’s been sold since April 2000) for £3 per property. Or you can get selling prices for free from Nethouseprices.com or Mouseprices.net.
If you have a property to sell, Mouseprices.net can also provide you with a free valuation (based on Land Registry selling prices in your area) although you should treat this with a certain degree of caution.
