The Best UK Property Websites & Portals
Every year millions of people use online property portals to help them find a property to buy or rent or for their next investment property. But there are now several different property portals to choose from. Here we’ll look at the main UK property portals and what each has to offer.
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OnTheMarket
OnTheMarket was launched by a group of sales and letting agents as an agent-owned portal so that they didn’t have to rely entirely on Rightmove and Zoopla as a place to list a property. OnTheMarket is now a Plc and is 60% agent owned.
Every property advertised on OnTheMarket is on the market with full-service estate or letting agents, who are experts in their local area. OnTheMarket offers two types of valuations: They offer instant online valuations and what OnTheMarket say are ‘more accurate’ valuations from an estate agent.
In its last half-year results in 2021 OnTheMarket said that it had 318 million annual website visitors.
OnTheMarket lists UK residential properties for sale and rent. OnTheMarket also has dedicated sections for retirement properties, farms, estates and land, student accommodation, new homes, help to buy properties, overseas property and commercial properties.
OnTheMarket says that they are able to offer buyers information on property that becomes available 24 hours or more before it appears on Rightmove or Zoopla. It does this using its Only With Us and Countdown Clock features.
As well as a simple search OnTheMarket also has a range of smart tools to help buyers deep dive on a given property. These seem designed to help OnTheMarket keep up with new portals like Boomin. These tools include Travel Time Search, Street Search, Help Me Choose and Wish Lists where buyers can specify deal-breakers and nice-to-haves to help them find properties. The Reserve Buyers List offers buyers a second chance to buy properties that have already been sold subject to contract.
PrimeLocation
PrimeLocation says that it attracts over 5 million visitors a month and advertises properties from over 16,000 estate and letting agent branches, including all the leading national chains.
As well as being a UK property portal PrimeLocation has overseas property listings in more than 60 other countries including France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Cyprus, South Africa, Dubai, Australia, Croatia and Bulgaria. It also has sections for new homes and commercial property.
PrimeLocation has a fairly simple search tool. It allows users to search by area, price, commute times and by features that might appeal to upmarket buyers and tenants like whether a property is secluded or has security.
Rightmove
Rightmove calls itself the UK’s number one property website for properties for sale and rent. Rightmove currently uses the slogan ‘find your happy’ to pitch itself to buyers and tenants.
Rightmove is believed to have the highest number of properties for sale and the Rightmove website has a high number of site visits. Previous analysis from HomeOwners Alliance suggests Rightmove gets 127.5 million site visits monthly and has around 1.1 million property listings.
Rightmove covers both sales and lettings. It also lists new homes for sale, student property to rent, commercial property for sale and rent and overseas property mostly in Spain, France, Portugal and Greece.
Unlike many other property portals, Rightmove doesn’t offer an automated valuation tool. It can however put prospective sellers in touch with local agents for either an in-person or video valuation.
Rightmove has a simple property search feature with users able to search by town name, postcode or station. There are however a number of tools that can help users home in on what they want such as the ability to draw a search area, browse on a map or search near London tube or rail stations, a school checker and a search tool for sold prices. Rightmove have a more advanced tool called ‘Where can I live?’: Buyers can enter their budget, property criteria and where they need to be near and it will show suitable properties to buy or rent.
Rightmove also offers a lot of market data and useful information on its site. This includes its House Price Index which also shows regional trends, national trends and London trends and is often reported in the press.
Zoopla
Zoopla is one of the biggest UK property portals. It currently claims to have over a million properties for users to browse.
Previous analysis from HomeOwners Alliance suggests Zoopla (including PrimeLocation) gets 50 million site visits monthly and has 927,000 listings.
Zoopla has a high profile as a result of its extensive advertising campaigns. Their latest campaign on the theme of ‘we know what a home is really worth’ is designed to tempt those who previously hadn’t thought of selling into the market.
Zoopla’s site plays heavily on encouraging potential sellers to obtain a home valuation. They offer a choice of an estimate which gives an instant automated valuation or a free agent valuation. Users can also check local house prices.
Zoopla offers listings for property for sale, new homes for sale, commercial property for sale, overseas property for sale, property to rent and commercial property to rent.
Zoopla’s search tool allows users to search by place name (and distance from) on a map or by travel time. Then by a range of criteria which are most recent, highest price, lowest price, most reduced and most popular. There is also a range of filters such as property type, buying options and must-haves.
Every Zoopla listing reports on proximity to stations and schools and includes an automatically generated carousel of what it considers are similar properties. Users can also access a range of market information on local prices and values and a listing history for each property.
Useful features on Zoopla include property news and other content including its Treehouse feature which it calls ‘the playful side of property’.