UK Property Portals - Any Use?

If you've had experience of buying a property in the UK, it's likely that you will have used one of property portals. There's many out there - and their number is increasing by the day - but the major ones are Primelocation, FindaProperty, PropertyFinder and Rightmove. All of them have Overseas Property sections. But are they actually any good, and will they help you find a property?

Well, kind of. Generally, all of the above provide the usual listings of properties, based on particular criteria (e.g. minimum 2 bedrooms, must be a house) and price. Most provide you with results for the whole of Florida, without a way of narrowing it down to a specific region within that state. In PropertyFinder's case, you can only search properties for the whole of America. Now, unless you're especially indecisive, that's not particularly useful!

But doing a general search for properties across Florida might actually be quite helpful. It may well be that you haven't particularly decided on an area yet, and want to see the types of different things for sale across the state. Alternatively, you may have a very specific budget, and need to see what that will get you in different cities and counties. At very the least, these portals will give you a list of some of the agents that operate in different areas. You can then Google these agents, find their details, and then contact them direct.

Overall, though, I'd only use these portals as one of the early steps in buying a property in Florida. Doing as much preliminary research as possible is always beneficial. But ultimately, you'll find it much better to use one of local Florida portals. (Each local region newspaper usually has one - for example Sun Sentinel Real Estate).