10 Filters You Should Be Using When Searching for a Flat in London (Most People Only Use 2)

Most people searching for a flat in London set two filters — price and number of bedrooms — and then scroll through hundreds of results manually, filtering the rest by eye. That works, but it's slow, and it means you're doing in your head what a search tool should be doing for you. Here are ten filters worth setting explicitly.

1. Price range

The obvious one, but worth setting a realistic ceiling and floor — a suspiciously low price for the area is sometimes a sign of a scam listing (more on that in our scam-avoidance guide).

2. Number of bedrooms

Straightforward, but decide whether a "2-bed" that's really a 1-bed-plus-boxroom works for you — many London flats stretch this definition.

3. Number of bathrooms

Often overlooked, but a real quality-of-life factor if you're sharing with flatmates. A 3-bed, 1-bath flat is a very different living situation from a 3-bed, 2-bath.

4. Postcode / postcode district

More precise than area name — see our full postcode guide for why this matters.

5. Commute time to a specific address

Not distance, not borough — actual door-to-door time to your office or university. This single filter often does more to narrow useful results than any other.

6. Furnished / unfurnished / part-furnished

Worth deciding upfront, especially if you already own furniture — searching without this filter set means manually checking every listing's description.

7. Available date

If you have a fixed move-out date from your current place, filtering by availability date avoids falling for a flat you can't actually move into on time.

8. Property type

Flat vs house-share vs studio vs maisonette — especially relevant if you specifically want or want to avoid a purpose-built block versus a converted house.

9. Pets allowed

If you have a pet, this filter alone can save hours of messaging agents only to be told "no pets" after you've already fallen for the listing.

10. Let type (long-term vs short-term / student)

Some listings are aimed at short lets or student-specific housing — filtering this out early avoids wasting time on properties that were never a real option for a standard tenancy.

Why most people skip these

Rightmove, Zoopla, and OpenRent all technically support most of these filters, but the interface for setting more than 2–3 at once is clunky, and it has to be redone separately on each site. In practice, most people set price and bedrooms, then eyeball the rest — which works, but slowly, and misses the fact that a flat matching 9 of your 10 real criteria might be sitting a few pages further down the results.

HomeScout applies around ten filters — including commute time, price, rooms, and bathrooms — automatically to every new listing across Rightmove, Zoopla, and OpenRent, so you're notified only about flats that already match what you actually need, rather than manually filtering a long list yourself.