Using Sken.io to keep up with the real estate market

The real estate market is a notoriously volatile beast and prices tend to shift a lot. In Europe alone, some countries have experienced sharp increases in housing prices towards the end of 2020 (such as Hungary, Denmark or Latvia), while elsewhere, the prices dropped (Cyprus, Romania, Italy). In certain places, the prices are even more prone to change even from day to day. Now imagine that you are planning to rent, buy or sell a house or other property. Maybe there is no need to even imagine. How do you keep up and make the best deal possible? By using technology, of course!

The perks of using Sken.io real estate monitoring

One does not buy or rent property on impulse - the process usually takes days, or even longer. If you are planning to buy property, you have probably checked dozens of listings already. Now, the most efficient way is to wait for a good opportunity. And Sken.io can help you recognize that opportunity by monitoring listings on real estate portals. Here is what you can do with our tool:

  • be notified whenever a brand new listing appears
  • monitor specific listings for price changes or availability changes
  • receive a reminder when apartments are being sold in newly constructed buildings
  • keep an eye on specific real estate agencies for competition or potential cooperation

And of course, the most important benefit of all - you save a lot of time and energy. No need to sit behind your computer and refresh, because Sken.io does it automatically and lets you know if there is anything new.

It is important to note that there are many real estate sites.

Setting up the apartment hunt

Real estate price checking, fresh property listings, monitoring the real estate market - all of this sounds neat, right? And it is not a complicated task. Here is what you need to do:

1

Think about what you want Sken.io to do

Are you tracking price changes of a single listing? Are you keeping an eye on family houses close to the city? Think about the specific task or tasks you want Sken.io to carry out and think about where the updates will appear. For example, let’s say that we just want to keep an eye on new apartments in Prague.

Real-estate portal image with property listings
2

Go to Sken.io and put in the URL you want to track

This can be one URL, one listing, or a specific category of listings on a website (for example - two-bedroom apartments in Prague). For our example, we go to a real estate portal ( ee24.com, for example) and search for apartments in Prague. Then, we copy the URL into Sken.io.

Sken.io site with input for url address
3

Select the part of the website which should be checked

A simple step, but a potentially tricky one - find the part of the website that will be changed. You can select an area, an element or even the whole page. If you know the real estate listing, you can just zoom in on the price and see when the price of an apartment goes down. For our Prague example, we shall select the entire page of our relevant search. And maybe add a few other tasks to Sken.io to watch the real estate prices of our top three apartment contenders.

Sken.io site selecting area action
4

Set up the frequency and means of notification

If you are very serious about finding an apartment, you may want to check for changes often. Maybe once per day is enough to see if a new place popped up. Maybe you only have time to go apartment-hunting on weekends. You can set all of this up in Sken.io. Then, set up the notification means (email, app, Google Chrome extension…) and you are set. Now, you wait to be the first one to get informed.

Sken.io site set-up the frequency of checks

A few tips for your real estate market overview

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Always think about what you want to track to avoid incorrect notifications. Websites can be different in how they show apartment listings or prices.

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With all Sken.io plans, you can track more than one specific website, which means you can even keep checking a handful of listings. Generally, it is more useful to have more smaller tasks than to monitor one specific website.

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If you are using Sken.io to monitor your real estate competitors, you can set up less frequent checks at the same time. That way, you can get a weekly set of email notifications on what is new.

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The same thing applies if you are a seller, have an apartment for rent or want to keep track of the real estate market in general (for example, if big development projects start their reservation phases while still in construction). You can get a good overview of the real estate market situation.

Staying on top of all the information is definitely tiring, but if you take some time to set up Sken.io in the right way for you, you can be notified about the offer, prices and many other options in a way that suits you best. Think about it this way - a tool for free or a few Euros can help you save thousands if you are the first one to jump on a great opportunity.