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Your support makes all the difference.So you are moving. More of us are, or so it would seem from the statistics put forward about the housing market. Moving home is one of the most stressful things you can do. Technology is supposed to make our lives easier.
So, can the technology of the Internet and the World Wide Web take some of the stress out of house-hunting and mortgage-seeking?
Maybe. As with most developments on the Internet, a glance at what is happening in the USA shows what is likely to be the way forward. Already, across the Atlantic, around 70 per cent of all residential properties up for sale are listed on the Internet.
We are not there yet. But, if you are moving some distance, the Web may be a good place to start looking before you start driving round estate agents. Even if you are intending to stay within a few miles of where you already live, it is worth checking out. It may save some petrol and footslogging.
So what's available online? The Guild of Professional Estate Agents has a site called property-platform which allows you to search by region and then by town. It then displays pages similar to those in property magazines, with photographs and brief descriptions of the properties. However, there is no detailed property search facility on the site.
Internet Property Finder includes most of the upmarket national agencies such as Knight Frank and Savills but carries only a limited selection of properties.
Woolwich Property Services was the first large estate agency chain to put properties on the Net. However, the Woolwich's Property Seeker again only has a selection, rather than the full range on the Woolwich's books.
Only just over a month ago, the National Association of Estate Agents launched PropertyLive. It currently has details on just over 1,000 properties but aims to carry information on 50,000 within the year. In addition, it has ambitions to link up to government databases allowing you to check outschools, hospitals and other local amenities.
There are a number of other websites which have only a few hundred properties at best. Most of the sites on the Net allow you to search their databases by several criteria: type of property (house, bungalow, flat, etc), number of bedrooms, price range and location.
If you are looking for a property right now, you may strike it lucky and find the home of your dreams on the Web but, in all likelihood, given the limited nature of what is available at present, you probably won't. What you will get though, is an idea of what sort of house you can expect to get in the location you are looking for and for the price you can afford.
A few years into the future and the Web is likely to be the first place everybody will look for a new home, and it won't just be a case of reading how many "beds", "receps" and "bthrms". You should, quite soon, be able to take a virtual tours of properties. It won't be a computer simulation or a collection of photographs - at least one site already offers this facility - but a digital video walk-through.
Woolwich Property Services:
www.wps-property-seeker.co.uk
Guild of Professional Estate Agents:
www.property-platform.com
Internet Property Finder:
www.propertyfinder.co.uk
PropertyLive: www.propertylive.co.uk
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