COMPARISION OF PROPERTY PORTALS COVERING THE FRENCH RIVIERA |
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Update Summer 2020
The same list of top websites are still showing the most adverts, although superimmo is now well below other leaders like Seloger. And at last Seloger has added a keyword search like superimmo and leboncoin.
News in June 2019
From our latest study, around 10 portals have disapeared or combined with other portals, like explorimmo.com.
As few new portals have made it into the list, consolidation is slowly taking place so our A-Z listing will show just the top 70.
Most portals have improved and include now land size in the search criteria which was absent before. We still regret so few portals offer a keyword search, like www.superimmo.com that allows easy combinations of keywords to include or exclude.
Our comparison of property portals will soon show the key search criteria available on the Top 30 portals.
To get the list of portals in a pdf file, please leave us your email.
News in June 2018
Some new portals have made it to the top of the luxury segment, like www.luxuryestate.com/france.
Others have either dropped down the ladder like Bienici.com with half the adverts they had 2 years ago, and about 20 smaller portals have disappeared.
The good news is that most portals have improved their search facilities and ease of use, and they had to be revamped to work on mobile phones. But progress is slow, as even quite simple enhancements which some portals have added such as locating a property on a map are either very slow or quite confusing. Video and virtual visits are still a long way away !
Over the next few weeks, we will be updating all the pages on our website relating to our portal listings, so watch this space.
What was new in 2016 ?
The arrival of the new property portal Bienici.com backed by traditional estate agents in response to the cost increase of brand leaders like leboncoin and seloger, changes the rankings we had 15 months ago. But as Bienici.com does not cover the new Internet agencies and "reseau de mandataires", nor private sellers, it cannot become the single portal that buyers can go to. So buyers will still need to check multiple portals to get a better idea of what is on the market. The one big benefit this new property portal has brought, is that many existing property portals, like leboncoin and greenacres, have improved their design and search capabilities.
Why is choice important on a real estate site?
When looking for houses for sale in the South of France, real estate portals can quickly give you an excellent idea on all the type of houses available within a price range and should help you find the specific property you are looking for. .
That is the main purpose of a portal site, to bring together as many of the properties for sale within a single site from all the estate agencies or owners.
But for an area like the Var, with 1200 active estate agencies, even the largest portal sites do not cover even half the market. That is why we have given you a complete list of portal sites to do your search thoroughly, and hope to bring to your attention some portals you were not aware of - popular is not always best. And remember if you find this overwhelming, you can hand us the task of doing the search for you.
When doing a search on portals, the first difficulty is selecting the area.
For our review we ran searches for houses across the Var and Alpes Maritimes, the two French departments that cover the French Riviera.
It is useful to run a search over a wider area. Some portals allow you to also select an area on a map or an area within say 10km from a town like Sainte Maxime.
Judging ease of use on the Portals we reviewed
Selecting the department easily, simple house types (house or apartment) from the top of the page, entering a specific price range and showing the number of results (or number of pages) sorted by price and also remembering our last search criteria earned 3 stars on ease of use. Anything less intuitive and we lowered the star rating on ease of use. Now almost all the property portals allow you to search by department .
Tips on the other selection criteria
In our quality check on portals, we have noted for the top 30 portals against the 5 key criteria that we have found useful, when managing searches for our clients. We will be providing in depth reviews of each site, over 2016.
When entering a price range, remember in the current market that houses when first advertised can be up to 30% above the final negotiated sale price they will go at, so put in a higher maximum price. Price setting is where agencies have a useful role to play. And if you think 5% commission is high, it will often avoid you paying the unrealistic price of a private owner who is emotionally tied to his house and has not yet mentally adjusted to the current market conditions. In the Var, unlike major cities like Paris, well over 80% of properties are advertised through agencies.
As many houses have the right to be extended, look at smaller houses with land, and factor 1000 - 2000 Eur per m2 to build extensions.
For UK readers, 1 square meter is 10.8 square feet. And for land area, 1 hectare is 10000m2 or 2.5 acres.
Final tip for Internet gurus, if you are painfully scrolling through pages of results, and you are only allowed to scroll a few pages forwards at a time, you will often find the page number within the url address like “p=7”. Change the number to “p=44” and you will fast forward to page 44.
The same list of top websites are still showing the most adverts, although superimmo is now well below other leaders like Seloger. And at last Seloger has added a keyword search like superimmo and leboncoin.
News in June 2019
From our latest study, around 10 portals have disapeared or combined with other portals, like explorimmo.com.
As few new portals have made it into the list, consolidation is slowly taking place so our A-Z listing will show just the top 70.
Most portals have improved and include now land size in the search criteria which was absent before. We still regret so few portals offer a keyword search, like www.superimmo.com that allows easy combinations of keywords to include or exclude.
Our comparison of property portals will soon show the key search criteria available on the Top 30 portals.
To get the list of portals in a pdf file, please leave us your email.
News in June 2018
Some new portals have made it to the top of the luxury segment, like www.luxuryestate.com/france.
Others have either dropped down the ladder like Bienici.com with half the adverts they had 2 years ago, and about 20 smaller portals have disappeared.
The good news is that most portals have improved their search facilities and ease of use, and they had to be revamped to work on mobile phones. But progress is slow, as even quite simple enhancements which some portals have added such as locating a property on a map are either very slow or quite confusing. Video and virtual visits are still a long way away !
Over the next few weeks, we will be updating all the pages on our website relating to our portal listings, so watch this space.
What was new in 2016 ?
The arrival of the new property portal Bienici.com backed by traditional estate agents in response to the cost increase of brand leaders like leboncoin and seloger, changes the rankings we had 15 months ago. But as Bienici.com does not cover the new Internet agencies and "reseau de mandataires", nor private sellers, it cannot become the single portal that buyers can go to. So buyers will still need to check multiple portals to get a better idea of what is on the market. The one big benefit this new property portal has brought, is that many existing property portals, like leboncoin and greenacres, have improved their design and search capabilities.
Why is choice important on a real estate site?
When looking for houses for sale in the South of France, real estate portals can quickly give you an excellent idea on all the type of houses available within a price range and should help you find the specific property you are looking for. .
That is the main purpose of a portal site, to bring together as many of the properties for sale within a single site from all the estate agencies or owners.
But for an area like the Var, with 1200 active estate agencies, even the largest portal sites do not cover even half the market. That is why we have given you a complete list of portal sites to do your search thoroughly, and hope to bring to your attention some portals you were not aware of - popular is not always best. And remember if you find this overwhelming, you can hand us the task of doing the search for you.
When doing a search on portals, the first difficulty is selecting the area.
For our review we ran searches for houses across the Var and Alpes Maritimes, the two French departments that cover the French Riviera.
It is useful to run a search over a wider area. Some portals allow you to also select an area on a map or an area within say 10km from a town like Sainte Maxime.
Judging ease of use on the Portals we reviewed
Selecting the department easily, simple house types (house or apartment) from the top of the page, entering a specific price range and showing the number of results (or number of pages) sorted by price and also remembering our last search criteria earned 3 stars on ease of use. Anything less intuitive and we lowered the star rating on ease of use. Now almost all the property portals allow you to search by department .
Tips on the other selection criteria
In our quality check on portals, we have noted for the top 30 portals against the 5 key criteria that we have found useful, when managing searches for our clients. We will be providing in depth reviews of each site, over 2016.
When entering a price range, remember in the current market that houses when first advertised can be up to 30% above the final negotiated sale price they will go at, so put in a higher maximum price. Price setting is where agencies have a useful role to play. And if you think 5% commission is high, it will often avoid you paying the unrealistic price of a private owner who is emotionally tied to his house and has not yet mentally adjusted to the current market conditions. In the Var, unlike major cities like Paris, well over 80% of properties are advertised through agencies.
As many houses have the right to be extended, look at smaller houses with land, and factor 1000 - 2000 Eur per m2 to build extensions.
For UK readers, 1 square meter is 10.8 square feet. And for land area, 1 hectare is 10000m2 or 2.5 acres.
Final tip for Internet gurus, if you are painfully scrolling through pages of results, and you are only allowed to scroll a few pages forwards at a time, you will often find the page number within the url address like “p=7”. Change the number to “p=44” and you will fast forward to page 44.
