Property websites like Rightmove and Zoopla are generally one of the first stops for people looking to buy or rent a property. They also help to provide a service for those who are searching for a reliable estate agent, or who are just trying to gauge general prices in an area they’re interested in.

However, recent evidence shows that high street and online estate agents often manipulate property listings in order to boost their presence by pushing themselves to the top of email alerts in what has come to be known as ‘portal juggling’

Estate agents have endless tricks up their sleeves to tempt potential buyers, not least their skills with flowery imagery and hyperbole when detailing properties. It’s often easy to spot when a property has been exaggerated when you view the house in real life and it looks next to nothing like how it was described.

What’s different when it comes to portal juggling however, is that it can be used to hide how long a property has been sitting, languishing on the market.

Portal juggling is when estate agents take a property off the market and then put it back up again a few weeks or months later to make it look like it is a brand new listing.

This could easily be missed by buyers as this ‘new’ property would fly to the top of a new email alert from one of these property websites. It also makes the agent seem more successful because their listings will increase.

There are genuine reasons for a property listing to be taken down and then out back up, for example, during periods like Christmas the owner might decide that they don’t want anybody viewing their property for a few weeks. It is still clear to agents that some firms actively manipulating listings over a short period of time.

Estate agent Chris Wood, of PDQ Property, said that some are purposefully removing the entire listing from the market and then re-listing it at a later date. He said: “Buyers are being misled. It’s the equivalent of being sold a stale piece pf cheese dressed up as fresh produce. Agents have a legal obligation that listings are accurate.”

It’s quite a task to spot a property that has been ‘juggled’. A buyer or seller would need to be constantly monitoring the property portals for listings that are similar to each other.

Many estate agents and property experts have developed a method that allows them to spot if an image or street name sounds familiar, through special agency software that sifts through listings, finds duplicates and then reports back to platforms such as Zoopla or Rightmove.