Housing website https://funda.nl is pretty dominant in the Netherlands. Why would you need to search many agent's websites when nearly all inventory shows up on funda.nl ?
I find it much preferable to North American sites like https://realtor.ca that think that number of baths is more important than floorspace (which to my utter amazement is often not even available).
You're right in that most listings eventually end up on sites such as Funda, Pararius etc. However, almost all offers go online on an agent website first, oftentimes considerably so. Your milage will vary of course, personally I started using agent sites after calling an ad that had been up on Pararius for 5 minutes yielded the response that the viewing list is already full. Turned out it had already been up on the agent page for a day and well-priced offers go fast in desirable areas. It is worth noting that I live in a very contested area, I would hope life is better in smaller places.
I’ve noticed this as well. That is why I’ve started scraping those agency websites and send an email whenever a new listing matching my criteria came online. I even made a tool out of it for others to use [1] (it currently crawls around 50 sites).
Same in Belgium. Agencies first email new offers to their registered users, then publish on agency websites, and only afterwards publish on immoweb.be.
There are sometimes rare jewels published directly by individuals on immoweb.be but the bulk of the offers is trash.
I can't escape the feeling that if an apartment ends up being bought by a person who learns about it hours or even a few days ahead of others, then it was priced too low and the seller left money on the table.
+1 to https://funda.nl. In fact as a new immigrant I bought house completely through funda. They have nice tie-ups with all the regulatory/certificate providers such as construction report etc., Fantastic experience overall.
Selling though is a completely different story it's almost impossible without an agent. And they do provide a valuable service; like photo session, publishing on funda and others, taking care of house-viewing etc.,
I find it much preferable to North American sites like https://realtor.ca that think that number of baths is more important than floorspace (which to my utter amazement is often not even available).