Why the same property keeps appearing in your alerts (and what to do about it)
You set up alerts on three portals, you check your inbox at 8am, and you have eleven new property emails. You open the first five. Two are the same flat in Marseille, one is a flat you remember seeing three weeks ago listed as "new," and a fourth is clearly the same Lyon apartment as an email from yesterday, just sent from a different portal. One out of eleven emails contains a property you haven't already seen.
This is not a glitch. It is how the market works, and it happens for two entirely separate reasons. Understanding both makes it easier to manage your search and set realistic expectations.
Last updated: May 2026.
The scale of the problem
Active property searchers in France and Spain with alerts set up across three or four portals receive between 40 and 60 percent duplicates in their inbox every week. That figure comes from FeedImmo data across users searching in both countries. It means that for every ten alert emails you open, four to six of them are properties you have already seen, either on another portal or in a previous alert from the same portal.
No major French or Spanish property portal offers any form of native deduplication. This is a deliberate structural reality, not an oversight.
Why duplicates happen: the two root causes
Duplicates in your property alert inbox come from two distinct mechanisms. The first involves the same listing appearing across multiple portals at the same time. The second involves the same listing appearing on the same portal more than once, either because it was republished or because multiple agencies are selling it simultaneously. Both produce alert emails for properties you have already seen.
Cross-portal duplicates: the same listing on multiple portals
Why do I get the same property from multiple portals?
An agency publishes the same listing to several portals simultaneously, so you receive a separate alert email from each one. This is standard practice across the French and Spanish markets.
In France, an agency with a flat to let will typically publish it on SeLoger, LeBonCoin, BienIci, and Logic-Immo at the same time. Each portal sends its own alert to subscribers who match the search criteria. If you have alerts active on all four, you receive four emails within an hour of each other. You open each tab expecting a different property. It is the same flat in all four.
In Spain, the same pattern applies. Idealista is the dominant portal, but most agencies also publish on Fotocasa and Pisos.com. A flat listed by an agency in Barcelona will frequently appear on all three within hours of going live. If you have alerts on each portal, three separate notification emails land in your inbox for one property.
Is this the same problem as in the UK?
The cross-portal duplicate problem exists in the UK, but it is less severe than in France or Spain. Rightmove and Zoopla together cover the vast majority of UK estate agent listings, so UK buyers are generally familiar with seeing the same property on both platforms. In the UK, you might receive two emails for the same property. In France, you can receive four or five. In Spain, three to four is common.
The reason France and Spain are worse comes down to market fragmentation. No single portal in France or Spain holds the same dominant position that Rightmove holds in the UK. French agencies publish across multiple portals because they cannot afford to exclude any of them. The result is structural overlap on a scale that UK searchers, accustomed to a two-portal market, do not expect when they move their search abroad.
Which French portals overlap the most?
SeLoger, BienIci, and Logic-Immo have the highest overlap because BienIci and Logic-Immo are both owned by the SeLoger group. Many listings published on SeLoger are syndicated automatically to the other two. A professional listing from a large French agency network such as Century 21, Nexity, or Foncia will often appear on all three, plus LeBonCoin.
PAP (Particulier à Particulier) is the one major French portal with no overlap: it carries only private seller and landlord listings, with no agency properties. Setting an alert on PAP will therefore produce different results from your SeLoger alert, not duplicates of it.
Which Spanish portals overlap the most?
Idealista is the most widely used portal in Spain and carries the broadest range of professional listings. Fotocasa is the second-largest and draws from many of the same agencies. Pisos.com and Habitaclia (particularly strong in Catalonia and Valencia) round out the main portals. Most professional agencies in Spain publish on at least Idealista and Fotocasa simultaneously, so cross-portal duplicates between those two are extremely common.
Same-portal duplicates: the same property appearing more than once on one portal
Why does a property I've seen before appear again as "new"?
The listing was deleted and republished by the agency to reset its position in the search results. This is one of the most frustrating duplicate patterns because there is no visual cue that the property is not actually new.
Most property portals in France and Spain rank search results by date, with the most recently published listings appearing first. When a property has been on the market for several weeks, it gradually drops down the results and receives fewer views. Agencies have learned that republishing a listing resets the clock and sends it back to the top of results. It also triggers a new alert email to every subscriber whose criteria match.
You receive an email that says "New listing in your area." You click through. It is the same two-bedroom flat you dismissed three weeks ago because the kitchen was too small, now back at the top of the results with a new listing date and, in some cases, a slightly adjusted price.
There is no reliable way to detect this from the portal's alert email. The only indicator is that you recognise the photos or the description from a previous email, which only works if you remember what you have already seen.
Why do I sometimes see the same property listed by two different agencies at different prices?
Two agencies both have a mandate on the same property. This is common practice in both France and Spain, and it explains why you can receive two alert emails showing the same flat but with slightly different prices, different photos, and different descriptions.
In France, a property owner can sign a mandat simple (non-exclusive mandate) with multiple agencies at the same time. Each agency can market the property independently. It is legal, it is standard practice, and it means the same property appears under multiple agency names on the same portal.
In Spain, the equivalent is a shared-exclusivity arrangement or simply a non-exclusive contract. Spanish property owners frequently give mandates to three or four agencies simultaneously, all of whom list the property on Idealista and Fotocasa. You may see the same flat listed at 280,000 euros by one agency and 285,000 euros by another because each agency has added its own commission structure.
The price difference is not always a clue that you are looking at the same property. Sometimes it is, but agencies can legitimately price the same property differently based on their fee arrangements with the seller. The photos and floor plan are usually the clearest indicators.
How widespread is the republishing problem in France?
It is widespread enough that French property forums and expat groups regularly discuss it. There is no official figure for what proportion of "new" listings are actually republished properties, but it is a known pattern across all major French portals. SeLoger and LeBonCoin do not take active steps to prevent it because republishing generates page views and advertising revenue on the new listing. Agencies do it because it works.
Why the portals have no incentive to fix it
The portals' commercial model is built around agency subscriptions and advertising. Agencies pay to list properties, and high listing volumes mean more subscribers, more traffic, and more advertising revenue. Deduplication would reduce apparent listing volumes. Cross-portal syndication increases the reach of agency listings, which is a feature, not a problem, from the agency's perspective.
The portals also do not compete on the quality of the search experience in the way that a consumer-facing app might. Their primary customers are the agencies paying for listings, not the people searching for properties. The searcher is the audience, not the customer. The incentive structure produces a market where each portal focuses on maximising its own listing volume rather than cooperating with other portals to give searchers a cleaner picture of what is available.
This is not a criticism of individual portals. It reflects a market structure that is replicated in most European countries. The UK has exactly the same dynamic between Rightmove and Zoopla. The difference is that in the UK, two portals cover most of the market, so the duplication ceiling is lower. In France and Spain, five or six significant portals each carry a meaningful share of listings, which multiplies the duplication problem proportionally.
What you can do about it
Monitoring fewer portals does not solve the problem; it just means you miss listings that are exclusive to the portals you stop watching. The most effective approaches are:
Running all your alerts into a single inbox folder so you can scan subjects and senders in one place rather than switching between multiple email accounts or notification streams. A dedicated Gmail address used only for property alerts achieves this and makes it easier to spot the same subject line appearing twice.
Recognising republished listings by their photos. Most agencies reuse the same photos when they republish. If you receive an alert and the hero photo looks familiar, compare the layout description and price against what you remember rather than treating it as a fresh lead.
Keeping notes on properties you have dismissed. A simple spreadsheet with the address and reason for passing is faster to scan than opening alert emails to check whether you've already seen something.
Using a tool that aggregates alerts from multiple portals and deduplicates them automatically. FeedImmo connects to your alert inbox, identifies duplicates across SeLoger, LeBonCoin, PAP, Idealista, Fotocasa, and other portals, and shows you each property once. It also tracks when a listing is republished, so you can see the actual days on market rather than the artificially reset date.
FAQ
Why do I receive so many property alerts for properties I've already seen?
You are receiving duplicates from two sources: the same listing published on multiple portals simultaneously, and the same listing republished on one portal to reset its position in search results. Both produce alert emails that look like new listings. FeedImmo data shows that 40 to 60 percent of alert emails received by active property searchers in France and Spain are duplicates.
Is the duplicate problem worse in France than in the UK?
Yes. In the UK, most estate agents publish on Rightmove and Zoopla, so the maximum number of duplicate alerts from one property is typically two. In France, a single listing is routinely published on SeLoger, LeBonCoin, BienIci, and Logic-Immo simultaneously, producing four separate alert emails. The French market is more fragmented, and the duplication ceiling is higher as a result.
Can I just use one portal to avoid duplicates?
You can, but you will miss a meaningful portion of available properties. PAP (France) is the one exception worth noting: it carries only private listings and has no overlap with agency portals. For professional listings, using only SeLoger will miss properties that are exclusive to LeBonCoin or PAP. There is no single French or Spanish portal that carries all available listings.
Why does a property I dismissed weeks ago appear as "new"?
The agency deleted and republished the listing to push it back to the top of search results. This resets the listing date and triggers new alert emails. It does not mean the property has changed. The price may have been adjusted slightly, but the property is the same one that has been on the market since the original listing date.
What does it mean when I see the same flat listed by two different agencies at different prices?
Both agencies have a mandate from the seller. In France (mandat simple) and Spain (non-exclusive contracts), property owners can authorise multiple agencies to market the same property at the same time. Each agency publishes its own listing, sets its own price, and takes its own commission. The price difference is usually the agency fee built in to different degrees.
Do the French and Spanish portals plan to fix the duplicate problem?
There is no public indication that any of the major portals plan to introduce cross-portal deduplication. It would require portals to cooperate and share listing data, which conflicts with their competitive interests. Individual portals could remove republished listings more aggressively, but republishing drives traffic and agency engagement, so there is limited commercial pressure to do so.
Does FeedImmo solve the duplicate problem?
FeedImmo aggregates alert emails from your existing portal alerts, identifies duplicates across SeLoger, LeBonCoin, PAP, Idealista, Fotocasa, Habitaclia, and other portals, and shows you each property once. It also tracks the actual date a property first appeared, so republished listings are flagged rather than shown as new. You can set up your existing portal alerts to forward to FeedImmo without changing your email address on any of the portals.
Start searching without the noise
FeedImmo pulls your French and Spanish property alerts into one feed and removes the duplicates. Connect your existing SeLoger, LeBonCoin, PAP, Idealista, and Fotocasa alerts in a few minutes. No need to change your email address on any portal.
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