My family and I are packing for vacation to Greece (Athens, Santorini, Mykonos and Crete) and I was searching for Travel photography apps that can help us capture the beauty of our experience in our images.
Speaking of apps, it made me think, “what apps would benefit my clients during their search for “Homes in Atlanta” (or any city in Georgia) and it sparked this blog.
House hunting is done 90% online (now, don’t quote me because I just made that 90% up, but it seems as though most house hunters are using the internet or their mobile phones to search for homes more than anything else). Am I wrong? … Probably Not…
Thanks to online platforms such as Zillow and Redfin, searching for homes that fit your criteria has become way easier than driving through neighborhoods searching for “For Sale” or “Realtor” signs. **Driving through neighborhoods IS a step in the home buying process once you have decided the neighborhood you would like to live in (but we’ll get to that in more detail in another post).
There are more apps than you may think are out there for house hunters. To make life easier, I’ve put together a quick cheat sheet with all of the FREE apps available. Everybody knows, we love Freebies!
You really can’t go wrong with Redfin. With features like foreclosure notifier, short sales alters, and for-sale-by-owner listing updates, it’s one of the most simple real estate apps on the market. You can search nearby homes, schools, condos, open houses, and townhouses, and see photos, top-down maps, and more. A host of built-in sharing tools also let you send your favorites via text message, email, or social media.
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Homes.com gives you access to millions of homes, apartments, condos, townhome and rental home listings at your fingertips. Better yet, you can sort the results by neighborhood market conditions, neighborhoods, foreclosure status — which includes listings from REO, HUD, and others. They’ve got the sexiest mortgage calculator to project your mortgage range or rent payments. Each listing is packed with property photos and stats too, and when you find one that you love, you can share it via a text message, messenger, email, Facepage and MyFace.
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Xome, an integrated real estate platform, aims to streamline the home-hunting process with innovative search tools. Xome Zoom lets you “zoom in” on any of the 100 million homes in Zoom’s property list (refreshed every 15 minutes), and filter search results by property type, price range, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, nearby schools, square footage, open houses, and a slew of other popular metrics. Xome’s Walk Score and school information also show which communities might be a good fit for you and your family, while Xome’s aptly-titled Value feature shows the market value for a given property. One of the app’s other hallmarks, Xome Concierge, puts you in touch with an agent, who can schedule a showing and answer questions about the property at hand.
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Zillow is one of the most comprehensive — and customizable — real estate services on the market. Its Zestimate tool lets you look up the rent or worth of any property in the United States, and robust search tools let you search by foreclosure stats, property type (single-family homes, apartments, townhomes, condos, and more), geographic location, address, region, price, and features such as the number of beds and baths. Social tools include a Renter profile, which helps you reach potential landlords and realtors, and a sharing tool that lets you circulate finds among friends and family. When you’re finally ready to commit, Zillow makes it easy to track down a local lender who’ll pre-approve you for a mortgage.
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One of my absolute favorite apps, HomeSnap. HomeSnap is not your average house hunting app. You can Snap a picture of any home and the app will show you details like, home value estimates, interior photos, beds, baths, taxes, lot boundaries, related schools, school ratings, etc. Or if you’re in a neighborhood, you can simply open the app and it will show you any home that is on the market, sold or has an open house etc. HomeSnap says it has 20-percent more agent listings than national portals, and that its buying tools are “best in class.” It certainly does seem that way, especially given you can also chat with realtors and landlords directly after taking a photo. I love this app!
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Starting your search is simple with Trulia. Trulia instantly shows beautifully detailed real estate listings based on your location and automatically remembers the properties you like to provide better recommendations. Or, if you know just what you’re looking for, you can search homes for sale, homes for rent, or apartments for rent by location, feature, size, price, keyword, and much, much more. Then Trulia can send you real-time updates about your favorite listings and notify you when new homes hit the market that match your preferences. When you find a house or apartment that looks interesting, share it with your friends, family, or significant other, or connect with a realtor. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Trulia features an affordability breakdown that calculates the full cost of owning your dream home, as well as an open house scheduler, a mortgage calculator, voice controls, a chat platform, iMessage support, and support for Android Wear smartwatches. It’s definitely not a boring app.
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The Realtor.com app claims to provide the best list of homes tailored to your needs and provides homes you otherwise might miss; it also claims to show more homes for sale than any other real estate app. You can browse listings (updated every 15 minutes) with their SnipSnap feature (you snap a photo of a real-life “For Sale” sign and it will use recognition to show you detailed listing information). You can also filter listings based on the address, city, zip code, home prices, the number of beds and baths, square footage, and a multitude of other metrics, and listings include information about price, sales, schools, and more. The app even supports Google’s Chromecast, meaning you can stream open house and apartment info — including directions — to your TV.
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I hope these apps are helpful during your home search. Let us know which is your favorite. Drop a line below.
Tootles!!!
If you or someone that you know is in the market to buy or sell real estate, our professionals would love to assist. You can reach us at 1-866-56-CENTRIC or access free buyer and seller resources at centricrealestategroup.com.
Centric Real Estate Group 