limit the number of a field value in search results - php

Question

I run real state website, which allows different users to add their properties.
When someone searches for a specific criteria, we use a select statement along with the specified conditions to select the matched properties, do the paging bit and display the results.
We use a rating algorithm to rate each property and use it to priorities the displayed properties.
A simplified version:
name type bedrooms user score
green house sale two bedrooms alex 6
Blue one rent three bedrooms jack 6
Blue one sale three bedrooms jack 4
gray one sale three bedrooms jack 6
green one rent three bedrooms jack 6
purple one rent three bedrooms jack 6
green one rent three bedrooms jack 6
green one rent three bedrooms gary 6
Now the problem is that sometimes a few properties have the same score. In these cases I don't want properties from one user to dominate a search result page, I want to set a limit to display a maximum of three properties of any given user in a search result page.
In the example, I don't want the properties owned by jack to dominate the first page, and properties of other users go to second page. This would upset other users and create a bad experience for visitors.
If I wanted to show only one property for a given user, I'd use Group by, but I'm not sure what to limit to a larger number ( three for instance). Is there anything I could do in mysql to achieve this?
EDIT:
Sorry if it wasnt clear enough.
The use field displays the user who added the particular property. A sample query could be
SELECT * FROM properties WHERE type = 'sale' LIMIT 5 ORDER BY score
The result could be five properties, all added by jack. I want to make sure that no more than thee properties added by a particular user, are included in the results. This way properties added by other users would have a chance to be displayed.

Answer 1

Use DISTINCT it will solve your problem.In a table, a column may contain many duplicate values; and sometimes you only want to list the different (distinct) values.The DISTINCT keyword can be used to return only distinct (different) values. Example
SELECT DISTINCT user FROM table_name;

Answer 2

use DISTINCT in your query something like this example
SELECT DISTINCT column_name,column_name from table;

Answer 3

try with this and change string your_table with your table name
SELECT
*
FROM
`your_table`
LEFT JOIN
(SELECT * FROM `your_table` LIMIT 3) as lr on lr.user = `your_table`.user
GROUP BY
user
reference link
UPDATE 2
if you want to order by your score you can use
SELECT
*
FROM
`your_table`
LEFT JOIN
(SELECT * FROM `your_table` ORDER BY score DESC LIMIT 3) as lr on lr.user = `your_table`.user
GROUP BY
user