Zoopla/Rightmove vs on the market

[Guillemot01]

Hello MNers,

I wondered whether any of you use Zoopla or prime location when looking for properties? The estate agent I want to remarket with is on onthemarket.com and rightmove but not zoopla/prime location and wondered whether that will be a big issue in terms of getting it out there. The rival estate agent we are considering think it will be an issue.

I just thought everyone went to rightmove by default but I could be wrong...

Guillemot

I think estate agents are using zoopla less, purely because they declare the price of what a property previously sold for.

I use zoopla, as it gives me the addition of a 'search words' box.

On the market, well I've tried it. But you have to click on each house to even get a basic summary. And it drives me mad!!

I use rightmove as well. I shouldn't still be looking but I fear an imminent chain collapse!

takes five minutes on rightmove to find out the previous sale price. Anyone buying a house will do that whatever site they find it on.

I used to use zoopla but I don't think it's as good as rightmove. I like finding the local schools as a priority and feel it's more difficult to do that on the other sites.

Prime location I just don't get on with and onthemarket just didn't show all the properties in the area I was looking in, in some cases they showed less than half the results of rightmove using the exact same criteria. For me rightmove is definitely the one site I would insist on advertising my property on but maybe someone else will think differently.

I would only use an agent that listed on both RM and zoopla. Everyone checks at least one of those. Not bothered about any other sites.

I keep an eye on the property market so I subscribe to new alerts for specified areas. I'm registered with all the major sites but if I want to search for myself I use Home.co.uk which shows you the properties and their agent and tells you which search sites its listed on.

Thanks for all your responses.

Do people use zoopla for searching for properties do you think? I thought it was just to look up sold prices/estimates but could be wrong.

Estate agent seems to think that zoopla is the one that everyone uses "down south"...

No when searching I use Rightmove and check sold prices and estimates on zoopla.

I am down south.

I only ever look at rightmove. I think it has the most choice and I like the 'draw a search' function.

I don't like the layout of zoopla, it looks too 'busy' to me.

Onthemarket only has a very small selection in my area.

Cacofonix that's what I do and I am from down south but live oop north :-)

I am in London, I auditioned a few agents before proceeding and I learned that Rightmove provides far more buyers and viewings than Zoopla here. My agents are listed with RM and with OnTheMarket too but I find that very user-unfriendly.

I'm house hunting myself too and RM is my tool of choice - great app, easy to use, drawn area tool (I have catchment areas drawn around my preferred schools!), instant alerts and saved searches and properties.

I might use Zoopla to find sold prices or alternative photographs of a property but RM is key to sales I think.

I was down south (now West Midlands) and only ever use(d) RM to check for houses when buying - we last sold/purchased in 2014. I will look at Zoopla, but only occasionally if I can't find the info I want re: sold prices/historic sales stuff on RM.

Have looked at OTM a couple of times, but wasn't keen on the layout.....

I'm house hunting from overseas, and I've got Rightmove, OnTheMarket and Zoopla apps installed.

But I only really use Rightmove. I HATE OnTheMarket with a passion and I don't find Zoopla very user-friendly, although I do check them occasionally. The other day I downloaded Primelocation - well that was a waste of time!

I always used to use Zoopla primarily, as I preferred the user experience plus the default search of newest listings rather than most expensive listings (as I was an addict and would check for new properties multiple times a day!) Until the introduction of OnTheMarket, almost every property in London was listed on both Zoopla and Right Move, so you could switch and compare listings between the two sites which was the best of both worlds.

Sadly, OnTheMarket is trying to kill off the competition by saying if you use their agents, you can only list on Zoopla or RM, not both. So now, in London, every property will be listed on RM, but only a subset on Zoopla or OTM. So I've switched to checking RM first, and Zoopla second. I hate doing that, because I still prefer Zoopla, but it just makes sense now because you know RM will have all properties listed.

Still, on principle, I would avoid an OnTheMarket agent precisely because they are doing this - trying to steal market share from Zoopla through anti-competitive manipulation rather than actually designing a decent site which would win users honestly. If OTM makes everyone default to RM instead of Zoopla so kills off Zoopla, it'll be users who suffer - we'll pretty much only have RM then, and RM will get lazy without any genuine decent competition.

(As an example of what I mean by 'get lazy' - recently, Rightmove have introduced a feature where they remember your preferred search, so Rightmove on my mobile will list properties by newest first, not most expensive first. That's a great improvement, and I suspect they only brought that in because they were losing out to Zoopla. Same thing with property histories - Zoopla had that first, and then Rightmove introduced it to keep up and now actually do it better than Zoopla. Having two innovative sites competing with each other will mean both keep improving. Having one major site and one site people only list on because their agent says they have to (OTM) will end up with two rubbish sites)

Not that I spend too much time on property sites, or anything.

I totally agree with CunningPlan, her reasons are the same as mine for hating OnTheMarket I just couldn't be arsed to type them all

Special how do you find previous prices on Rightmove? I look at Zoopla solely for that. Also like newest properties first on Zoopla with most expensive first on RM.

Claudia - just use the "house prices" tab on the rightmove homepage

Thanks Squeezy but I meant the prices a house for sale had achieved in the past ie when the current owner bought it and maybe the one before that.

Sorry. Use the "market info" tab on the individual house

That was for claudia

Rightmove does show reductions and date of reduction but as far as I know, it doesn't show the amount the property was reduced by.

Thanks Squeezy that's really helpful and will save much time.

One good thing about zoopla is you can use key words to search like "period property"

Can you do this with right move