House Hunting: Useful Phone Apps for Renters

Finding a perfect place became easier in the last ten years with lots of rental platforms around. But, touring a house you like is only the tip of the iceberg and definitely not the only thing you should do. There are many types of applications for your smartphone that can help you evaluate the property and assist in your apartment hunting quest. So today, we want to review the best mobile apps you may need while apartment hunting.

Must-Have App for Anyone: Google Maps

This app is an absolute must for many reasons! First of all, you can use it when you’re not sure whether the neighborhood is good for you without taking a walk there. It still might be better to check out the place with your own eyes, but it’s 2021, and not everyone loves to perform an unnecessary physical activity.

What’s more, inspecting the neighborhood with the help of Google Maps will give you a better understanding of all nearby shops, restaurants, schools, hospitals, and anything else you might need for your everyday life. How many times have you discovered a small coffee shop just around the corner a year after living in the area? If you do a quick research on Google Maps, you can easier spot some hidden gems and start enjoying them now.

It’s a waste not to become a power user of Google Maps when you search for a new home or just moved into a new apartment. After all, this app offers much more than a map and directions on how to commute to work from your new place. With the help of Google Maps street view, you take a virtual walk around and check out what you’ll see with your own eyes daily. Create lists of favorite places and those you want to check out, search for the closest groomer — Google Maps is your best friend when it comes to quickly learning about your new community.

Best App for House Hunting: Rentberry

Our native app allows tenants to find apartments for rent in a few taps. Our goal is to fully automate the rental experience and make it convenient and simple for both tenants and landlords. 

Downloading our free app to your smartphone will ease your house hunting — with the help of the Rentberry application, you can:

Download: iPhone | Android

Other features you might find particularly interesting include virtual tours, the possibility to schedule apartment tours online and send maintenance requests to the property manager in mere moments.

Rentberry offers properties in over 50 countries across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Additionally, thanks to the comprehensive filters, you can search for pet-friendly homes or select essential amenities you want to have in your future place. Also, you can select a map view to look at the rentals in one specific area if you set your heart on one.

Best App for Getting to Know the Neighborhood: Nextdoor

Moving and getting acquainted with a new area might be difficult, even if it’s just the adjacent district from your old place. This is where Nextdoor comes into play. This app is a great way to learn about your new community, connect with your neighbors, and get informed about any local events and news.

There are plenty of ways users of the app benefit from it. You can get notified about get-togethers such as picnics and barbeques your neighbors initiate or create your own event and post info about it on the app. Also, you can find local babysitters, dog-walkers, or any other helpers who might be living in the same building and willing to offer their services! But, Nextdoor is not only about meeting people in your neighborhood — you can download it to receive local police information and check out what people in your community think about a specific restaurant or shop.

App to Analyze the Convenience of Your Area: Walk Score

One of the key things to take into consideration while looking for a new place is whether the neighborhood suits you. Walk Score helps you to determine the walkability of this particular property, find different coffee shops, restaurants, stores, and schools.

Basically, this is the ultimate tool that will help you understand whether the location around your new house fits your needs or not. Walk Score can generate you a full report on the commute time and give you commuting options available in this are: walking, bicycling, driving, and public transport. This is all you need to evaluate the convenience of living in the selected area.

Top App to Use During the Move: Sortly

Moving is always a pain when you have lots of belongings and no way to organize them electronically. Luckily, guys from Sortly created an iOS and Android app that will help you “sort things out” with your moving problem.

All you have to do is create some folders within the app for different rooms, collections, and types of items, then you just add the items and sort them between these folders to keep track of everything when you pack and unpack.

Sortly allows you to include pictures, different kinds of notes, item values, warranty details and you can even put a link to this particular product on the internet (just in case).

Once you’ve moved and unpacked, this app will still be handy if you like to organize large collections of items and keep track of them when you loan them to someone.

Best App for Monitoring Safety in the Area: Neighbors

If you’re concerned about the safety of your family and want to keep an eye on any real-time updates, make sure to download Neighbors by Ring. Thanks to this app, residents can report anything from local crimes to fires and even lost pets. Every time someone posts an update regarding an issue in your area, you’ll receive a notification on the phone. Similarly, you can inform all your neighbors by posting a few words, a photo, or a video describing the situation.

The app is free for anyone, and you don’t have to be a user of Ring devices to install and enjoy its full capacity. There is currently some controversy regarding Ring working with law enforcement agencies, so the choice of whether you want to use the app is yours. But, overall, we think that it’s a great app any renter or homeowner should know about.

App for Finding Service Professionals: Angi

This app will help you find companies and professionals to renovate your home and just for any project at your rental. Search for one-time services of a handyman, find a professional for a full-on spring cleaning, or use it even before you move into your new place to find movers.

You can apply built-in filters to find low-cost or top-quality solutions. The app is free, is available on iOS and Android, and has a community of 5 million members. This creates a safe and verified environment.

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Best App for Decorating Your Rental: Room Planner

Once you’ve moved to a new place, there is a chance that you have no idea how to organize the furniture there in order to create the best living experience for you and your family. There is a great trick that should help you: you should take a look at your new place from above. What do I mean? It’s simple!

Just install the Room Planner, draw your new place there in any kind of scale and start moving your virtual furniture around in this app. It will help you avoid unnecessary physical activity like moving around real stuff and save some energy for important things. Play with it until you’re happy enough with your results and then get back to real life and work these things out for real.

App to Check Internet Coverage: Opensignal

When you are looking for an apartment, it’s always important to make sure that your internet coverage will be good enough to maintain your internet activity.

Opensignal is the best way to check out the coverage map and see whether the point you’re standing at is actually covered with mobile and Wi-Fi signals. You can also find Wi-Fi and compare the signal coverage quality right on the map. It’s gonna be useful for those who ‘live online’ and work with social media closely. After all, we all consider our social media life as a crucial part of our everyday life, so there is nothing more convenient than this kind of app.

Top App to Monitor Your Internet Speed: Speedtest by Ookla

When your potential landlord tells you that the internet speed in this apartment is amazing, just like a Ferrari race car, there is no need to rely on his words only. Now you can simply download the Speedtest app right to your smartphone and check the following internet connection features:

• Your ping, download, and upload speeds
• Graphs that show you the connection consistency
• Get detailed reports on the internet connection and share your results

We are really worried about your internet connection, so we’ve reviewed two applications that should help you make sure that you’re online and you’re all set to pay rent.

There are tons of different applications that can ease your renting experience. Your smartphone is the ultimate device that now can stop you from making an uninformed decision and moving into the place you’ll regret about.

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