Many people regard online estate agents as their first port of call when they start house hunting.

The reasons are clear. Most internet estate agents offer an instant property information service on a web site while email makes communications between agent and seller/buyer faster.

Another reason is the wide choice of properties on the internet. If you know where you want to live, there are dozens of estate agents in that area keen to help you.

Sussex has more than 100 estate agent branches in Brighton and Hove alone.

Most offer a similar level of High Street service but some agency web sites are a whole lot easier to navigate than others.

I undertook a short survey of estate agent's web sites to find out which ones offered the best service, looking at those names that came up when we ran a "Brighton estate agent"

search on Google.

Bonetts has two offices in the city. Its rather dated-looking web site informed me there were no properties for sale for less than £75,000 and those between £75,000 and £100,000 were all sold.

The online market would seem to be doing well.

All the other price brackets showed lots of properties that were already sold, making the web site a great tribute to Bonetts' sales ability but not too useful as a place to find a new house.

Direct Residential Lettings (DRL) specialises in rented property and places a great deal of faith in its web site to attract new business.

Godfrey Green, of DRL, said: "We make a real effort to update our web site every day but the real secret of our online success is to pay the search engines to be listed."

The DRL web site offers a wide range of flats and houses to rent and makes the information easy to access.

The site seemed extremely efficient and the agency's telephone response to my queries was courteous.

My only (miniscule)

gripe was I would have appreciated a button to return me from my searches to the home page.

BryanMcCoy Estate Agents' web site is very bright and attractive but after a few minutes of playing with the search facility I discovered that, like most of the other agents in the Brighton area, it had very few properties for sale.

All the properties were easy to find and well described with more than adequate photographs.

Bentleys' web site has a good range of properties, both for sale and to let, and gave me a full list to browse.

The site was easy to navigate but there were no photographs of the properties so it didn't hold my attention for long.

The Houseweb site is obviously doing very well with its bright and efficient interface.

It had sold everything on its books.

This is one of the most exciting-looking online estate agencies and I can easily see why people would be attracted to it.

Although the Houseweb site was bare of property there was a polite note saying the market was moving very quickly and the agency was looking for more houses to sell.

Because this site is so well designed and easy to use I would definitely come back again to check out new listings.

The Fish4 Homes site includes details of homes for sale and rent, mortgages and insurance, buying and selling guides and an estate agent directory.

The mortgages section explains the different types of mortgage, enables you to search those offered by more than 45 providers and contains a calculator to find out how much you can borrow.

It contains just about everything anyone interested in property could need and is well worth a visit.

With so many online agencies in Brighton and Hove, it is worth spending some time to check them out. Web browsing for a new house can save a lot of wasted time and effort.

www.bonettsproperty.co.uk
www.directlettings.com
www.bryanmccoy.co.uk
www.bentleys-estates.com
www.housewebsite.co.uk
fish4.co.uk/homes/index.jsp