Real-estate property buyers: best Android and iPhone apps for your house hunt
If you are looking for a new place to rent or if you are ready to make the big move and buy a new property, you might want to have seen the best offers on the market.
Luckily, in this day and age, you can do so on your phone (be it an Android or iPhone), provided that you have the right apps and the patience to look through all the available real estate properties available.
In this article, we have picked the best apps for Android and iPhone that one can use in their pursuit towards that dream home. Some have a great selection of properties, others shine with a clever interface and yet other ones will allow you to filter your search in the best way possible. Take a look at each of these apps and see which ones you can use in your search.
Realtor.com
Real estate
Rentals
Realtor.com is the biggest name when it comes to buying and renting, and as such it features a truly massive catalog of properties that you get to pick from. Usually, this should be one of the most important criteria for home buyers: after all, nobody wants to miss that one dream property.
It also has a very convenient interface with the option to quickly swipe between pictures without even going into the ad, to see whether you are interested.
Redfin
Redfin allows you to search all nearby homes that are available for sale or have a custom area to track. The app takes pride in its up-to-date listings, as the catalog gets swiftly updated as often as every 30 minutes. Powered by local MLS listings, the app has a very wide selection of offerings. It allows users to plan open house visits, search for homes near specific schools, and the most useful option of reading comments by Redfin agents who describe the state of particular homes after they've actually visited them.
Trulia
Trulia allows you to filter your home search by location, house features, or you can simply enter keywords to see real estate listings and homes for rent. Save your criteria to get real-time notifications about properties that you have saved and be alerted instantly when new homes that match your search hit the market.
Zillow
Zillow provides access to a vast database of pre-market, recently sold and current for-sale properties. What's nice is that also brings estimated values of more than 110 million homes to prospective buyers. It features a cool "Draw" feature for house hunters to map out a specific search area with their fingers.
Xome
Download for iPhone
Xome features a dashboard that can bring them in contact with real estate agents and mortgage brokers, while later in the process of purchasing, it is possible to use the dashboard to track the status of purchase contracts and loans.
Doorsteps Swipe
Download for iPhone
Doorsteps Swipe will feel like home for regular Tinder users: it has the same interface, but for properties, as you just "Swipe" right on the ones you like (and this way save it for later), and swipe left on the one that you don't like to pass on it. The ones you've swiped to like get a little badge, and are neatly synced with a Doorsteps.com account for easy sharing with friends and co-searchers.
Lovely - rent
Lovely is a well-designed app that makes home-hunting a very visual experience, arranging the listings neatly on a map and automatically bringing new listings to your device. The neat option for a renter card will save you time when applying for rent in various places and it just makes the process appear seamless. Lovely is an app that delivers rentals exclusively, there are no properties for sale here, but that might be a good thing, as it does offer a couple of bonus features that renters will appreciate. You can also save favorite listings, messages and history organized from your inbox.
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