Alerts
An alert is a saved search that tells you when something new turns up. Saving a search switches it on; there is nothing else to configure.
Almost everything people expect about alerts is wrong in one specific way, so this page is mostly about what fires one.
What fires an alert
A property arriving in the catalogue that reads like the search you saved.
That is the whole rule, and each half of it matters.
Arriving. An alert fires on a property entering the catalogue. It does not fire when a property already in it changes: not on a price cut, not on a correction, not on a withdrawal and re-listing. If you want to follow one property rather than a market, save the property.
Reads like. The match is on meaning, not on your filters. When you save a search, the words you typed are turned into a mathematical fingerprint, and every new property is compared against it. A property scoring at least 75% similar is a match.
Why your filters do not decide it
They are stored with the saved search and they are used when you re-run it. They are not what the alert compares against.
This surprises people, and the reason is worth knowing, because it changes how you word a search you intend to save.
A filter is a wall. "Maximum 600,000" excludes a property at 605,000 absolutely, including one that is better than everything under the ceiling. It also excludes every property whose agent left the price blank. An alert built on filters would be silent about all of them, and silence is indistinguishable from nothing happening.
Meaning degrades instead of excluding. A property slightly outside what you described scores slightly lower rather than disappearing, and if it is close enough you hear about it.
The practical consequence: write the search in words, not just filters. A saved search whose filters are precise and whose text is "flat" will match almost any flat. One that says "quiet two-bedroom flat in Kreuzberg with a balcony, up to about 600,000" has something to compare against.
Where they arrive
In your notifications. Each one names the search that matched and how close the property was, and links to the property.
The unread count is the number you have not opened. Marking one read or clearing them all does nothing to the alert itself; it keeps firing.
Turning one off
Delete the saved search. There is no pause: a saved search is an alert, and one that is not alerting is a search you can re-run from your history in a few seconds.
This is deliberate rather than an omission. A paused alert is a thing people forget they have, discover months later, and cannot remember why they set up.
When one goes quiet
A search that has not matched in weeks is usually one of three things.
Nothing new is arriving that fits. Check by re-running the search and looking at how recent the results are. If the newest is from months ago, the market is the answer and no wording will change it.
The wording is too specific. A saved search describing a property that does not exist yet matches nothing, and it will never tell you that. Loosen the sentence rather than the filters.
It was saved before we could read it. Rare, but if the wording was not understood at the moment you saved it, the search still works when you re-run it by hand and will never alert. Deleting and re-saving it fixes that.
Cost
Saving a search costs one credit, once. Every alert it later sends is free: you pay to set the standing instruction, not per delivery. See credits.