Archive for January, 2010
Properties facing the virtual hammer in February
Having just launched our new auction section on Zoopla.co.uk there is now (as we write) only 15 days to go until our first LIVE auction, so we’ve picked five properties that will be going under the virtual hammer.
Traditionally auctions have been for property investors and developers. However our auctions are designed for everyone including buyers, sellers and agents. Home hunters can now search properties for sale several weeks in advance at Zoopla.co.uk/auctions, arrange viewings with the relevant estate agents and then place online bids during the live four day auction period. At the end of the live period, the successful bidders will exchange contracts online.
Those selling property can speak to their estate agents about selling their property through our LIVE auctions – this could potentially speed up the transaction time and achieve the best possible price.
The first LIVE auction starts on February 11th at 12:00 pm and bidding runs for four days.
Tenure: Leasehold
Description: A studio apartment situated in this very popular location known as the ‘Pimlico Grid’ within very easy reach of Pimlico and Victoria stations.
Tenure: Leasehold
Description: A new-build 3 bedroom semi detached house in good condition. Located on the Waterloo Place estate in the West Bank area of Widnes. The property has easy access to both the M62 and M56 motorways to Warrington and Liverpool.
Tenure: Freehold
Description: A two bedroom ground floor apartment situated in a popular and quiet area.
Tenure: Freehold
Description: Individual and architecturally designed and detached residence. Offering extremely spacious, family sized accommodation over three floors and situated on a quiet lane with panoramic views to the front and side.
Tenure: Freehold
Description: An impressive 5 bed detached house with swimming pool, integral garage and gardens.
Zoopla.co.uk launches LIVE property auctions
We have just launched, what we think is, a very exciting and innovative new section to the Zoopla.co.uk website – LIVE online property auctions with our partner Real Estate Disposition Company (REDC).
From today, house hunters will be able to search properties for sale several weeks in advance at Zoopla.co.uk/auctions, arrange viewings with the relevant estate agents and then place online bids during the live four day auction period. At the end of the live period, the successful bidders will exchange contracts online.
The first online auction of approximately 150 homes will begin on February 11 and end on February 14. So, lots of time to get out and view the properties. Thereafter live online auctions will take place regularly running from Thursday afternoons to Sunday evenings.
We see online bidding as the future of property auctions not only for the buyer, but also for the seller. It really could change the way we buy or sell property.
For buyers – online bidding gives the buyer the chance to purchase property from motivated sellers in a simple, transparent way with certainty of outcome.
For sellers (through estate agents only) – ability to set a reserve price and market via auction as well as the traditional route to achieve the best sales outcome in terms of exposure, price achieved and speed of sale.
Not only is this a great opportunity for the buyer and seller but also for agents.
For estate agents – the auction provides a unique route to market for the agents and their clients resulting in greater exposure of the property and faster times to sale.
So make sure your agent has offered you this service, if not, ask them to contact us direct.
Click here for a little more on how the auction works.
Finally, we’d love to hear your feedback – especially if you’re looking to take part in the bidding. Leave a comment below or come and find us on Twitter.
Five Sweet Chocolate Box Properties
It looks like after a five-month long chase by Kraft, a sweet deal is about to be signed to buy Cadbury.
So, as a tribute to Cadbury, we’ve put our new keyword search tool to work and unwrapped five stunning chocolate box properties for you.
1. £950,000, 5 bedroom detached house in Astrope, Tring, Hertfordshire
More properties for sale in Hertfordshire
2.£595,000 – 3 bedroom property in Nettleton, Chippenham, Wiltshire
More properties for sale in Wiltshire
3. £545,000 – 4 bedroom detached house in Glinton, Peterborough
More properties for sale in Peterborough
4.£469,950 – 3 bedroom detached house in Cockington Village, Torquay
More properties for sale in Torquay
5.£329,000 – 3 bedroom detached house in West Wickham, Cambridge
More properties for sale in Cambridge
Ten properties with…a snooker room
After the defeat of Ronnie ‘The Rocket” O’Sullivan at the snooker Masters this weekend at Wembley, we decided to use our fabulous new Keyword search tool and find out how many properties are for sale on Zoopla.co.uk with a “snooker room”.
Our search found 143 properties available for sale on Zoopla.co.uk with a “snooker room” and here are ten ranging in price from £2.4m to £375,000.
1) £2,900,000 – 6 bedroom house, Beech Drive, Ringwood Estate, London, N2
More property for sale in Hampstead
2) £2,800,000 - 6 bedroom detached house, Dennis Lane, Stanmore, London
More property for sale in near Stanmore
3) £2,790,000 – 7 bedroom detached house, Weston Road, Wilmslow, Cheshire
More property for sale in Wilmslow
4) £2,750,000 – 5 bedroom detached house, North Road, Hale, Cheshire
More property for sale in Hale
5) £1,495,000 – 4 bedroom house, Slack Hall Farm, Horwich, Bolton, Lancashire
More property for sale in Bolton
6) £499,950 – 4 bedroom detached house, Upland Road, Upland, Wirral
More property for sale on the Wirral
7) £485,000 – 4 bedroom detached house Scudamore Close, Pontrilas, Hereford
More property for sale in Hereford
8 ) £435,000 – 5 bedroom detached house, Moresby Parks, Whitehaven, Cumbria
More property for sale in Whitehaven
9) £435,000 – 5 bedroom detached house Denyer Court, Fradley, Staffordshire
More property for sale in Fradley
10) £375,000 – 4 bedroom detached house Church Lane, Bottesford, Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire
More property for sale in Scunthorpe
New feature: Keyword property search
Here’s a staggering statistic for you – property searches on Zoopla.co.uk were conducted at the rate of one every 0.46 seconds in 2009. With 86,400 seconds in a day, that’s a huge amount of searches taking place across the site on a daily basis.
However, previously for sale and to rent searches on Zoopla.co.uk have predominantly been sorted by location, price, type and number of beds…until now.
From today, you can now search property listings on Zoopla.co.uk by any keyword you want! That’s right, any keyword relevant to you – garage, studio, parking and so on.
After running a location search (in this instance Bedford) the ‘Refine for sale search’ box will appear on the right hand side of the ‘for sale‘ and ‘to rent’ results.
Within this box (see image below) a new field called ‘Keywords’ appears just below ‘Price’. It looks like this (take a look at the image below):
Here’s an example of the search results for properties for sale with a garage in Bedford – 297 results in total to choose from:
Results for 'garage' as keyword
You can also search for exact phrases by using quotation marks e.g. “double garage”, or to exclude a term you can prefix it with ‘-’ e.g. -studio.
