HOW TO FIND HOUSES THAT NEED RENOVATION USING RIGHTMOVE & ZOOPLA
Ellie Dalglish-Hawkins
July 13th, 2021
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We assume you’ve landed here because you’re on the lookout to find a property that is in need of renovation, likely to flip it for a quick profit, or turn it into a cheap Buy To Let opportunity and maximise your yields.
It’s all well and good saying it, but the hardest part of actually getting a renovation property is finding the perfect opportunity. A lot of work, effort and time goes into finding that one property that’s ideal for your criteria.
We’ve written a guide on exactly how you can find that opportunity through popular property portals like Rightmove & Zoopla:
Before jumping into finding any kind of property you want to know exactly what you are doing, know which area you are interested in purchasing a home and have a good knowledge of how much it may cost to undergo certain bits of work.
Picking the right area is essential, it’s important that you know at least a little bit about the area and what locations are good to purchase, what kind of price ranges you can expect within that area and importantly if you are flipping, what types of properties sell quickly.
The price range is of particular importance for the next section, narrowing down your search, because for instance if you are looking for a run down 3 bedroom semi for a budget of around £150k then you might be able to make that work in Middlesbrough for instance, but in London, it’s simply not going to be possible.
Now you’re armed with your initial research, you should have a good idea of what postcode areas you’re going to be looking for the property and what kind of budget you have available.
On popular property portals like Rightmove or Zoopla, you tend to get filters that allow you to narrow down your search to meet your criteria. Once you’ve put your postcode in, decided how far you can go from there, and the type of property you are after, you can now arrange the properties by lowest price first.
Depending on the area, your first lot of low priced results will likely be auction houses and feel free to look through and maybe even bid on them, but the starting price is very unlikely to be the price you’ll actually achieve.
Here’s another great tip that most people searching for property won’t realise. You can use Google to find and narrow down your property search even more and highlight some good opportunities.
You can use Google search commands to find specific properties within the search results themselves, here’s an example of what to type:
site:rightmove.co.uk/properties/ “city/town/postcode” “keyword”
You can change the town or city for your selected area, and we’d recommend going for keywords like “refurb” or “renovation project”, terms that people will use in the description to describe the property.
You can also narrow it further if you want to add extra quotation marks and adding “x bedroom”, x obviously being the number of bedrooms you’re ideally looking for.
You can do the same with Zoopla using the below:
site: https://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/property/ “city/town/postcode” “keyword”
You know exactly what filters you want to select for the ideal property – but unfortunately, there is nothing showing up that really turns your head. Not to worry, that’s what the alerts function is for.
You’ll need to create a Rightmove or Zoopla account for this, you will then be able to select the filters that you want to look for and you’ll get an alert whenever a new property comes on the market which meets your criteria or if a price change brings it into your selected price range. Each time there is an alert you’ll get an email with the new property details.
This allows you to act quickly on any opportunity that you see and get your bid accepted ahead of the competition.
Now it’s time to create your shortlist, make a note of every property you like the look of and plan out whether they might be a good opportunity and worth viewing in the first place, to maximise your time.
You’ll need to list things like the sale price, estimate renovation cost, months taken for the renovation and expected sale price so you can figure out whether it’s worthwhile looking into and what kind of price you would be able to offer in order to turn a worthwhile profit.
Good renovation opportunities can often be hard to come by, there is potentially a lot of competition, depending on the area that you are searching for of course. This ties into creating alerts, but you’ll need to have a keen eye on your emails & be able to determine if the property will meet your budgets and criteria quickly.
If it fits within your criteria, make sure you book your viewing and get your offer in ASAP to avoid lots of competition.
Another thing to be aware of is to not be put off by the lack of photos, often when there are properties in need of renovation, there isn’t exactly a lot to show off as “selling points” so the fewer pictures might actually be better sometimes!
Right, so we’ve talked you through how to find a property to renovate and flip for a profit with Rightmove and Zoopla, but we actually have deals that might be more suitable for you.
Finding you great property deals that meet your criteria is what we do! We’re a property sourcing company that is a little different from the rest, we are part of a group of companies that also includes a cash buyer – meaning we get the deals to send to our investors straight from vendors at below market value!
Just let us know what you are looking for and we might already have properties suited to you.
Start your property portfolio today!
We assume you’ve landed here because you’re on the lookout to find a property that is in need of renovation, likely to flip it for a quick profit, or turn it into a cheap Buy To Let opportunity and maximise your yields.
It’s all well and good saying it, but the hardest part of actually getting a renovation property is finding the perfect opportunity. A lot of work, effort and time goes into finding that one property that’s ideal for your criteria.
We’ve written a guide on exactly how you can find that opportunity through popular property portals like Rightmove & Zoopla:
Before jumping into finding any kind of property you want to know exactly what you are doing, know which area you are interested in purchasing a home and have a good knowledge of how much it may cost to undergo certain bits of work.
Picking the right area is essential, it’s important that you know at least a little bit about the area and what locations are good to purchase, what kind of price ranges you can expect within that area and importantly if you are flipping, what types of properties sell quickly.
The price range is of particular importance for the next section, narrowing down your search, because for instance if you are looking for a run down 3 bedroom semi for a budget of around £150k then you might be able to make that work in Middlesbrough for instance, but in London, it’s simply not going to be possible.
Now you’re armed with your initial research, you should have a good idea of what postcode areas you’re going to be looking for the property and what kind of budget you have available.
On popular property portals like Rightmove or Zoopla, you tend to get filters that allow you to narrow down your search to meet your criteria. Once you’ve put your postcode in, decided how far you can go from there, and the type of property you are after, you can now arrange the properties by lowest price first.
Depending on the area, your first lot of low priced results will likely be auction houses and feel free to look through and maybe even bid on them, but the starting price is very unlikely to be the price you’ll actually achieve.
Here’s another great tip that most people searching for property won’t realise. You can use Google to find and narrow down your property search even more and highlight some good opportunities.
You can use Google search commands to find specific properties within the search results themselves, here’s an example of what to type:
site:rightmove.co.uk/properties/ “city/town/postcode” “keyword”
You can change the town or city for your selected area, and we’d recommend going for keywords like “refurb” or “renovation project”, terms that people will use in the description to describe the property.
You can also narrow it further if you want to add extra quotation marks and adding “x bedroom”, x obviously being the number of bedrooms you’re ideally looking for.
You can do the same with Zoopla using the below:
site: https://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/property/ “city/town/postcode” “keyword”
You know exactly what filters you want to select for the ideal property – but unfortunately, there is nothing showing up that really turns your head. Not to worry, that’s what the alerts function is for.
You’ll need to create a Rightmove or Zoopla account for this, you will then be able to select the filters that you want to look for and you’ll get an alert whenever a new property comes on the market which meets your criteria or if a price change brings it into your selected price range. Each time there is an alert you’ll get an email with the new property details.
This allows you to act quickly on any opportunity that you see and get your bid accepted ahead of the competition.
Now it’s time to create your shortlist, make a note of every property you like the look of and plan out whether they might be a good opportunity and worth viewing in the first place, to maximise your time.
You’ll need to list things like the sale price, estimate renovation cost, months taken for the renovation and expected sale price so you can figure out whether it’s worthwhile looking into and what kind of price you would be able to offer in order to turn a worthwhile profit.
Good renovation opportunities can often be hard to come by, there is potentially a lot of competition, depending on the area that you are searching for of course. This ties into creating alerts, but you’ll need to have a keen eye on your emails & be able to determine if the property will meet your budgets and criteria quickly.
If it fits within your criteria, make sure you book your viewing and get your offer in ASAP to avoid lots of competition.
Another thing to be aware of is to not be put off by the lack of photos, often when there are properties in need of renovation, there isn’t exactly a lot to show off as “selling points” so the fewer pictures might actually be better sometimes!
Right, so we’ve talked you through how to find a property to renovate and flip for a profit with Rightmove and Zoopla, but we actually have deals that might be more suitable for you.
Finding you great property deals that meet your criteria is what we do! We’re a property sourcing company that is a little different from the rest, we are part of a group of companies that also includes a cash buyer – meaning we get the deals to send to our investors straight from vendors at below market value!
Just let us know what you are looking for and we might already have properties suited to you.
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