Purplebricks Scraper

Scrape Purplebricks — the UK estate agent's live property listings at purplebricks.co.uk. Search homes for sale by location with price, bedroom, and property-style filters; fetch full property details by ID; and look up valid search locations. HTTP-only via the site's public pages and JSON endpoints. No auth, no proxy.

Data Source

Purplebricks is a UK online estate agency (purplebricks.co.uk). The original company ceased UK operations in 2024, but the domain and brand were relaunched under new ownership and the site currently serves live for-sale listings across England, Scotland, and Wales (verified during development, 2026-08). No platform swap was needed.

What this actor does

• Three modes: search (location-based), byIds (full details), suggestLocations
• Filters: price range, bedrooms range, property style, sort order
• Rich listing data: price, address, postcode, bedrooms/bathrooms/receptions, photos, description
• Full details: floorplans, video tours, tenure, council-tax band, local expert contact, auction dates
• Empty fields are omitted

Output per property

• id — Purplebricks property ID
• title, address, shortAddress, postcode, location
• marketPrice, priceText, priceQualifier, minimalAdvertPrice, maximalAdvertPrice
• bedrooms, receptions, bathrooms, carSpaces
• style (style code), styleTitle (e.g. Detached house, Flat, Apartment)
• description
• imageUrl, imageThumbnail, imageCount
• sold, underOffer, toLet, hasExtras flags
• closingDate, distance, rentFrequency
• expertName, expertPictureUrl
• sourceUrl — canonical property page
• recordType, scrapedAt

Extra fields in byIds detail records

• primaryImageUrl, primaryImageFullUrl, primaryImageThumbnail
• imageUrls[] — up to 30 full-size photo URLs
• floorplanUrl, videoTourUrl, portalVideoUrl
• tenure, tenancy, councilTaxBand, councilTaxRateAnnualAmount
• serviceChargeAnnualAmount, groundRentAnnualAmount, groundRentReviewPeriodYears
• yearsLeftOnLease, leaseEndDate, sharedOwnershipPercentage
• latitude, longitude, timeZoneAbbreviation
• starPoints[], extras[]
• auctionDate, auctionTime, regionType
• expertEmail, expertPhoneNumber, expertRegion

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search / byIds / suggestLocations
location	string	london	UK location to search (mode=search)
ids	array	–	Property IDs (mode=byIds)
searchText	string	–	Location text (mode=suggestLocations)
suggestionCount	int	10	Max suggestions (1–50)
priceFrom	int	–	Min price (GBP)
priceTo	int	–	Max price (GBP)
bedroomsFrom	int	–	Min bedrooms
bedroomsTo	int	–	Max bedrooms
propertyStyle	string	–	Style code (e.g. 9 detached, 27 apartment)
sortBy	string	relevance	relevance / highestPrice / lowestPrice / newest
includeSold	bool	false	Also return sold properties (mode=search)
maxItems	int	50	Hard cap (1–1000)

Example: 3–5 bedroom houses in London under £1M

{
  "mode": "search",
  "location": "london",
  "priceTo": 1000000,
  "bedroomsFrom": 3,
  "bedroomsTo": 5,
  "sortBy": "lowestPrice"
}

Example: full details by property ID

{
  "mode": "byIds",
  "ids": ["1911812", "2075626"]
}

Example: find a searchable location

{
  "mode": "suggestLocations",
  "searchText": "manchester",
  "suggestionCount": 10
}

Example: apartments only

{
  "mode": "search",
  "location": "greater-london/london",
  "propertyStyle": "27",
  "priceFrom": 250000
}

Use cases

• Property-market research — track asking prices and stock by UK city
• Portfolio analysis — monitor price bands, bedroom mixes, and listing churn
• Buyers — shortlist homes in an area with hard price/bedroom filters
• PropTech — feed listing metadata into valuation or demand models
• Comparative analysis — compare Purplebricks' agency pricing against other portals

FAQ

What is Purplebricks? A UK online estate agency (purplebricks.co.uk) whose sellers pay an up-front fee instead of a commission. The site carries for-sale homes across England, Scotland, and Wales.

Do I need an account or API key? No. All modes use public pages/endpoints.

Is there a rate limit? The site is a public consumer site; the actor adds small polite delays between requests and retries on 429/5xx with backoff.

Why did my search return 0 results? The location must be a searchable UK place. Use suggestLocations to verify the exact spelling, then pass e.g. location: "london".

What do property style codes mean? 6 Terraced House, 7 End of terrace house, 8 Semi-detached house, 9 Detached house, 11 Ground floor flat, 12 Flat, 14 Ground floor maisonette, 15 Maisonette, 23 Town house, 27 Apartment.

Why are byIds records richer? Search pages embed a summary; the /Api/Propertylisting/{id} endpoint returns the full listing (floorplan, tenure, expert contact, images, coordinates).

What does underOffer / sold mean? Purplebricks marks listings as sold or under offer on the listing; the flags are carried through to the output.

How fresh is the data? Live — every run reads the current public listing pages.

Limitations

• Search results paginate at 10 per page; large maxItems values mean more page fetches.
• The site carries for-sale listings only; rental listings are not served.
• byIds returns the current state of the listing; withdrawn or removed listings return 0 records for that ID.