A woman has criticised the property portals for their limited search options.
In a letter to the Daily Mail, Shelagh Price, of Skegness, said the portals work well for those who know where they want to live – but not for those seeking a certain lifestyle.
She said: “Because ‘location’ is the prime search criterion, it’s difficult for the lifestyle-driven property hunter to discover them.
“If you work from home and don’t need to live in a city, how do you find the area and the property to give you the quality of life you’re looking for?
“If you’re retiring and would like to move to ‘the countrywide’ or ‘the coast’, how can you discover all the possibilities?”
She says she tried searching for ‘seaside property’ on one portal but was offered only homes in Dorset.
She said: “Unless ‘coastal’ or ‘seaside’ comes up in the name, you can search only by geographic location.”
Does she have a point?
Comments (15)
Surely even with Mr Mays’ wonderful piece of technology (is it being used anywhere now that I can see it work?), it is down to the actual agents to tick the relevant boxes and to be honest, they can’t even tick the basic ones most of the time. I search for rentals in particular nearly every day and there is usually something vital missing (when the property is available) or wrong (furnished when not or vice versa).
Yes, it does tell me which agents are poor at their job and to avoid if possible but it is also highly annoying. You can lead a horse to water etc.
***Ducks behind sofa, knowing I am moaning to a host of estate agents ***
Also just to add, most of the “additional requirements” seem to be subjective, allowing for bending of the truth. What exactly is “In the countryside”? How close does the neighbour have to be? How many trees within 50 metres?
Another problem with property portals (and many other computerised systems, for that matter) is their insistence on using the postal town in the address. Postal towns went out when postcodes came in over half a century ago! In many rural locations the postal town is up to 20 miles away from the house or village in question and far more relevant is the nearest town to the property. In many cases the postal town is in a different district council area, different constituency and is sometimes in a different planning authority area and even county! Confusing for would-be buyers and bad for vendors when the postal town is a particularly unattractive or unpopular place which may make house hunters by-pass the property details.
Of course she could think for herself, decide where she wants to live and visit a few of these dinosaurs they call local estate agents!
Fair point Typhoon – but very impractical if you are not already living in the area you want to move to.
Google Maps, Ordinance Maps, Bing Maps, Apple Maps…
There are huge amounts of resources out there if you look. I do agree though, make it very easy for the consumer to use so they don’t have to visit other sites leaving yours. Give them what they want and they wont just stay, they will come back.
The root of this thread is not about finding where a property is situated. That’s the easy bit. The problems start when you want to internet portal search for very specific/unique features.
“…decide where she wants to live and visit a few of these dinosaurs they call local estate agents!”
YOU OWE ME A KEYBOARD, Typhoon!
I was discussing the topic of ‘dinosaurs’ only this morning with another prolific poster on EYE.
135 million years+/- on the planet before they were decimated to var-nigh extinction by a GEE – but their close relatives can still be found today.
**** sapiens, on the other hand – about 200,000 years to get where they are today.
‘Progress’ has resulted in this ‘new race’ of planetary caretakers being closer to wiping ourselves – and the planet itself – out than T-Rex and his cold-blooded buddies ever were.
Lesson to be learnt/learned (delete which you feel be grammatically correct – both work here ‘oop North) if you think you’re better/moreadvanced/whatever and the natural successor:
Don’t **** with the dinosaurs unless you have an asteroid!
I have a fair amount of experience with implementing alternative searching like ‘Lifestyle’ and ‘Multiple time based travel’. The benefits for those that do not know the alternative locations are huge. For an industry that claims that buyers don’t know what they want, it is hard to believe this type of searching is not more common.
Having the ability to show property available based on travel time is massive, Propertywide have a decent implementation of travel time. To be fair though, there is a map search on most sites/portals, can you not see country properties by using this view?
Addjective tagging was one of the first things I built into the RM4 interrogators, it over comes that problem for all search not just property search on portals. That is the bit that generally makes people say the ‘F wow’ when they realise the RM4 suite of products is a bit more than 3 box google.
As well as simple stuff like lifestyle, RM4 is being used to mine some very profitable and some very sound investment opportunities.
We demonstrated veracious search back in 2015 as one of our explanation pieces to show how property search is going to evolve. It will be wonderfully flattering to see people who have dismissed RM4’s clunky simplicity now start to emulate this basic Generation 5 functionality.
Am I the only one who needs a translation for Mr Mays submissions?
Dont get me wrong I admire anyone who tries to make the whole process better and working in a rural area I am as keen as anyone for adjective searching.
Sorry old timer. Present portal technology (all of it) has it foundation set in 1996 when the first property websites allowed agents to share properties in one place on the internet. The industry hasn’t kept pace with developments. The stuff I am demonstrating now does exactly what you need it to do; it allows applicant requirement searches to find your listings directly to you the agent.
Generation 5 is the 5th distinct phase of technology for estate agency, the first 4 are; manual systems, for producing details and post mailing. Dos computing, Windows computing and cloud computing. Property portals are generation 3 technology that rely on very basic yes/no matching functions.
Anyone who starts a search on the internet usually starts with a search engine such as Google. They type in what they are looking for. Generation 5 technology cuts across search engine optimisation and makes it redundant. SEO is the expensive bit that puts a website at the top of search results. Rightmove and Zoopla currently dominate SEO because of all the content they have from agents. It is hard to beat the portals at SEO because of it.
If you are an applicant looking for a retirement bungalow on Saunton Park the article is correct using the portals you can’t search for that. If you use G5 technology and add a retirement bungalow on Saunton Park…… I will leave you to discover what it does.
Because G5 does away with expensive SEO the cost is kept to a minimum (about 4% of a typical portal listing) but very very much more effective.
The main function of G% is not to compete with the portals to sell property but to help vendors identify the right agent to instruct.
I apologise for talking geek nerd but I have to get the early adopter’s attention in order to show tangible results that a very conservative industry will understand and trust.
I know a man who knows the answer…
Calling Mr May…
She most certainly does have a point.
I have long been amazed that given the millions and millions of pounds that have been spent by portals, the search facility of every one of them is still relatively so unsophisticated. The ‘wants’ list of most buyers will have some very distinct preferences yet the search facilities on all the portals cater for very little more than the basics.
The failure of the portals to develop better, more intuitive, search models is staggering.
I remember years ago having an applicant who insisted they would only buy a property with suspended floors. It didn’t take us long to find them a selection – manually. Try doing that on an internet search today and you wouldn’t even get off the starting blocks. This is a very extreme example, but you get my drift.