USEFUL WEBSITES FOR BRITISH HOME BUYERS

Once upon a time you had to make endless phone calls and wait several days for bulky brochures to arrive by post when searching for homes in Britain. Now, you can find most information, including what the street looks like, what the house next door sold for and what mortgages are available with just a click of a mouse.

Websites providing extensive property listings include FindaProperty.com, Rightmove.com and Propertyfinder.com. Some of these and other property search sites give information on mortgages, insurance, Home Information Packs (HIPs) and other homebuying services.

Property search sites like Globrix.com and zoopla.co.uk give data on prices trends. And another search site, upmystreet.com , offers advice on how to improve a property and deal with nuisance neighbours.To find out which properties have had their prices reduced go to propertysnake.co.uk

The Land Registry, landregistry.gov.uk gives official statistics on house prices although it is a couple of months delayed. If you want more recent house price data look at market monitors hometrack.co.uk, hbosplc.com and http://www.nationwide.co.uk/.

The BBC provides a mortgage calculator on its website which shows how much you can expect to pay at different rates of interest,
bbc.co.uk/homes/property/mortgagecalculator.shtm.

Google has added several features in the last couple of years which are useful to property buyers: by typing in a property's address, Google Street View and Google Earth give street level and bird's eye views of it and the surrounding area respectively. Meanwhile, Google Maps shows where the property is located.

Information about a neighbourhood's facilities is available from nestoria.com and ukvillages.co.uk, although both can be several months out of date.

To ask residents and local property experts questions about an area go to godirect.co.uk.

Both the National Association of Landlords, landlords.org.uk. ,and Association of Residential Letting Agents, arla.co.uk., provide advice to investors. The ARLA site also lists letting agents.
For buyers seeking help from a buying agent, The Association of Property Finders and Buyers Agents (APFBA) has 50 members listed on its website, apfba.org.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) provides advice, including how to buy at auction on its website rics.org, plus market comment and a list of members for buyers who want a property surveyed.

Thousands of repossessed homes for sale can be found at repossessedhousesforsale.co.uk and property auction news is available at propertyauctions.com

For more information about HIPs, property information that a home seller must give a buyer, go to homeinformationpacks.gov.uk.

(All The World's a Home : Global Property News)