How To Buy Property Online

There's an easy way to get a cheap mortgage and make your property dreams come true. Just use the internet.

There are some things in life you should not attempt to do over the internet. Propose marriage, for example. Learn to dance. Play twister. Baby-sit.

Using the internet to make your property dreams come true, however, is a different matter.

You may recall that, once upon a time, to buy a property, you had to actually go and see an estate agent, mortgage broker and solicitor. Face-to-face. With your own two eyes. For months, your lunch-breaks, weekends and days off would be eaten up by these middle-aged men in suits and their endless, expensive jargon.

But that was back in the dark ages, before the internet changed the act of property hunting forever.

With a click (or a tap) of your fingers, you can now find out everything you need to know about buying a property, online. Whether that's figuring out what price to offer on a property, tracking down the best mortgage deal, appointing a mortgage broker, hiring a solicitor, or merely finding the home of your dreams, the internet offers it all. You just need to know where to look.

Get your dream home

If you want to bag your dream home, you need to stay ahead of the crowd. So don't just rely on searching the major estate agency websites like rightmove.co.uk or findaproperty.com.

Visit all the individual websites of local estate agents. It might take you a bit more time, but these sites are likely to be far more up-to-date and will give you an edge over the competition. EstateAngels is also worth a look.

Don't forget the smaller, DIY property selling sites, such as housenetwork.co.uk and the newly launched tescopropertymarket.com. According to Alliance & Leicester, one in 10 vendors now choose to cut out the middleman and sell their homes online themselves in this way.

Offer the right price

Not so long ago, to figure out whether a property was on at the right price, you had to visit 30 or 40 properties in your chosen area to 'get a feel of the market'.

Nowadays, you can view hundreds of properties online. And not just homes which are for sale right now. Check out ononemap.com, which compiles data from all the major property sites and puts them all on one map. As well as searching for new properties, you can opt to view recently sold properties on your street - with pictures and descriptions.

You can also find out the actual prices paid for property in a particular street in the past, courtesy of the Land Registry. This is especially useful if the property you are thinking of buying was bought by its current owners within the last seven years -- as you can then find out what they paid for it. Simply type the postcode of the property into nethouseprices.com.

Once you know the price paid for a property in a specific quarter of a specific year, you can use Nationwide's quarterly house price index to figure out what it would be worth today. Simply type the price and date into this house price calculator.

If you can spare £20, you could also purchase an online report on the value of a particular property from Hometrack, whose database contains more 15 million surveyors' valuations.

Get the best mortgage deal

Don't know where to start when it comes to getting a mortgage? Unsure about how to compare different deals with different fees and rates? The internet is here to help.

First of all, work out which deals have the most competitive interest rates right now by looking at our Best Buy Tables. Then, type the interest rate of the mortgage and the mortgage term (typically 25 years) into our mortgage calculator to determine your monthly repayments.

Finally, download a fees calculator to work out the overall cost of the deal, including fees. This will allow you to compare different deals accurately.

Alternatively, speak to a mortgage broker, who can figure all this out for you. Use The Motley Fool Mortgage Service to find a fee-free broker who can recommend the most suitable deal for you from the whole of the mortgage market.

Save on legal fees

When buying a home, you can save money and time by using an e-conveyancer. This web-based service will generate a list of competitive, exact quotes from a panel of over 150 conveyancing solicitor firms. Once you have selected your conveyancer, they can be instructed at the click of a button and your conveyancing will start immediately.

Don't be put off by the fact that you've never met -- and are never likely to meet -- a cheap lawyer. They only exist in cyberspace.

Next week: How to use the internet to save money on a home move

More: The Fixed-Rate Mortgage Gamble

Donna Werbner is Deputy Editor of Your Mortgage magazine