In this article, we're going to be looking at two browser extensions which are going to make looking for property online a lot more efficient. These are Property Tracker for Chrome and Property Bee for Firefox.
Both of these plugins help you monitor any changes that have been made to property listings on Rightmove. These can be price drops or changes to the description. It's all information that can be very useful from when you are shortlisting potential deals right through to negotiating them.
For those of you don't know a browser extension is a piece of software that adds additional functionality to your browser. Often they are used to offer new, enhanced ways for a user to interact with the web pages that they visit.
The two extensions we are going to look at are Property Bee for Firefox and Property Tracker for Chrome.
1/ Property Bee for Firefox
2/ Related links
3/ Property Tracker for Chrome
4/ Putting it all together
5/ Join our FREE training today
These plugins are similar.
Both are made to help you track property on Rightmove by providing more comparative data on properties as you view them on the Rightmove website.
They do however only work with the browsers I've mentioned above.
So, if you want to try Property Bee you will need to download and install Firefox first and likewise, you'll need to install Google Chrome if you want to use Property Tracker. You don't need to replace your current browser. Multiple browsers can always be used alongside each other.
Using Property Bee For Firefox
What Is Property Bee?
Property Bee is a browser extension for Firefox that uses aggregated data to show a historical record of price changes on Rightmove.
What Does Property Bee Do?
When you are searching for potential, investment property on Rightmove, Property Bee is fantastically useful.
It's designed to help you better spot potential deals in any postcode that you are searching.
For instance:
It helps you spot recent price reductions. As seasoned property investors will know, price reductions can be a good sign that the property has a motivated seller (that is to say, a seller who is very keen to sell quickly).
Property Bee will help you analyse and shortlist your deals simply by giving you a lot of useful information. But, it's not just about shortlisting. This software will give you information that will come in very useful when it comes to negotiating the price of the property with the vendor.
Installation
If you don't have Firefox installed you will need to do that first. Go to Mozilla and follow the instructions from there.
Don't worry. This will not replace your existing browser but will work alongside it.
Then you will need to visit Property Bee.
As you can see from this screen grab of the homepage, under the "What Does It Do?" heading it says:
When you view a property listing on a site like Rightmove, the toolbar will show the changes to the price and details since the property was listed.
Also if you 'join the bee' you will be able to find historical information found by other users.
If this sounds great to you then that's because it is.
There are of course other property portals other than Rightmove. You shouldn't ignore Zoopla or On the Market but Rightmove is still the property portal of choice, at least with the investors that I know.
So, to install the software you just need to launch Firefox and go to the Property Bee home page. There you need to click on the install link at the top left-hand side of the page and when prompted you need to click 'allow'.
You will then have to restart Firefox and go through a quick registration process but after that, you will be good to go.
How Does It Work?
Property Bee works by aggregating data from the crowd. This means that when another user of Property Bee performs a search on Rightmove then the data that is returned from that search gets stored on Property Bee's servers.
So, when you view a property on Rightmove with Property Bee installed then not only will you be able to see the current price but you will also be able to see the price the property was listed at when previous users of Property Bee viewed that property.
Likewise, by viewing a property you are adding to the crowd-sourced data that Property Bee is aggregating.
This means that the more people who use Property Bee the better it is going to be for everyone. With this in mind I ask that you share this article or video far and wide. If together we can get more people using this software the more we are all going to get out of it.
Using Property Bee
Now you have Property Bee installed when you go to Rightmove you will have the additional data that Property Bee provides.
It's very slick. Property Bee integrates the new data with Rightmove so that it looks like it is part of the website itself.
So when you navigate to a property listing you will notice a new section, giving you any information that Property Bee has available regarding changes to the listing for price and description.
If you look at the screenshot above you'll see that there is a section on the property listing which with a blue background. This is the information that isn't found on a normal Rightmove page and shows just how useful Property Bee is.
Property Tracker
What Is Property Tracker?
Property Tracker is a browser extension for Google Chrome that uses aggregated data to show a historical record of price changes on Rightmove.
Introduction
Next, we're going to use another piece of software called Property Tracker. It's similar to Property Bee in that it makes spotting price reductions on Rightmove listings a lot easier.
Of course, price reductions don't tell us everything we need to know about a property but they are a good place to start if you're on the hunt for motivated sellers and potential bargain properties in your area.
Likewise, Rightmove is only one of several good sites for sourcing property. The other two main ones are Zoopla and On The Market. Rightmove, however, is still the biggest property portal and most of the investors I know default to it for their searches.
Spotting Price Reductions
We have other articles on how to use Rightmove to find refurbishment properties and others on motivated sellers so I'm not going to go into that here.
I'm just going to look at how to spot price reductions on Rightmove.
Zoopla already has that functionality. You can apply filters on Zoopla which will show you when and by how much the prices of properties came down. Rightmove, however, has no such function.
Luckily for us, however, there are browser extensions that will help you to unlock that data that, for whatever reason, Rightmove has decided to keep hidden.
Property Tracker for Chrome
Above we talked about Property Bee for Firefox users. Installing Property Bee gives the user a lot of additional, crowd-aggregated data regarding any change to the property price or description, which the software lays over the user's view of any given Rightmove property listing.
Now, I want to talk about a different browser extension called Property Tracker which works with Google's Chrome browser.
It's really simple to set up. It's really easy to use.
The data it helps you access is going to help you a lot when it comes to narrowing down your search.
Installation
First of all, you are going to need to be running the Google Chrome browser. The desktop version can be installed from here. Don't worry if you are running a different browser. Installing Chrome won't replace what you are using but will simply work alongside it.
Using Chrome you should then go Google and search for "property tracker add-on". The first link should be to the Google Webstore and the Property Tracker page from where you can install the software.
All you need to do to get Property Tracker up and running is to click 'add to Chrome' and it's good to go.
How Does Property Tracker Work?
The quick answer here is that works in the same way that Property Bee works - by aggregating user data.
When you have Property Tracker installed, all the information you are seeing in Rightmove as you search the site, is sent to Property Tracker's servers and in turn made accessible to its users. This means that when someone else comes along and looks at the same pages, they can see what information appeared to you when you looked at them.
And that means that if the information has been updated between those two visits, the changes that have been made to the listing, are visible.
Using Property Tracker
So, once the browser extension is installed, all you need to do is go to Rightmove and search for properties as normal.
What is different here is that above the main property image and to the right, just under the price, there is an arrow. In this case, it is a downward arrow meaning that there has been a price reduction amended to the listing. If the arrow pointed upwards that would mean the price had increased. Pointing to both the left and right would mean no price alterations at all.
If you hover your mouse over the arrow then a floating text box gives you the dates that any of those price changes occurred.
Useful, right?
Of course, it is. But, you need to do your due diligence. Price reductions tell you only so much about a property. Obviously, you can see immediately that there have been problems selling the property for the original price. Price reductions might indicate a motivated seller or even someone who is desperate to sell. But equally, they might also be an indicator that there is some kind of problem with the property or the area. You need to make sure that you are sure before you dive in.
Putting It All Together
Firstly, there is a small disclaimer that I need to make. Both Property Tracker and Property Bee might not always work. Neither extension is sanctioned by Rightmove and changes in code on the Rightmove website could render each of them useless, at least while their developers catch up.
Secondly, as I hope I've made clear in the article, there is only so much that you can assume from changes to the price and descriptions for properties on Rightmove. Such changes will help you when it comes to your research and your negotiations with the vendor but there is lot more research that you can do and many more techniques you can and should bring into play when you are sourcing or buying an investment property.
But, as tools to have at your disposal, Property Bee and Property Tracker are extremely useful. Knowing how the marketing for a property has changed over time, and the price is the first step to identifying potential bargains in the areas you are researching. Price reductions may only be a starting point but it's a good one.
Join Our FREE Training
Thank you for watching this video. If you liked this content then why not join our free, online property training course? In there we cover a range of different property strategies to help you get started on building a long-term property portfolio or creating a cash-flowing property business. We also look at ways to increase your return on investment with any of the properties you may be considering and we also have a couple of cheat sheets and downloadable documents.