The tech-crazy aspect of the real estate business isn’t limited to buying and selling houses — the rental marketplace is bursting at the seams with apps to make apartment hunting easier, too, for tenants and landlords.
There’s a very good reason for this: Apartments are hot. Nationwide, occupancies hit a record 95.1 percent in May and continue to hover near that level, according to industry data.
Investors are pouring money into software intended to make it easier to shop for an apartment and for landlords to screen would-be tenants.
A sampling of recent introductions:
Apartmentlist.com Who says you have to be in an apartment to check it out?
Apartment List says it wants to save renters the aggravation and wasted time of tramping through prospective units that are just plain unsuitable. It has unveiled Look, which it says gives apartment hunters 360-degree, detailed views of rooms, floors, ceilings, exteriors and community amenities of units listed on its site. The effect is somewhat like looking at an interiors version of Google Street View. The company says it has photographed the interiors of more than 30,000 apartments (mostly large multiunit buildings, so far) in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Washington and Denver.
Doorsteps.com/swipe If you’re not sure what you’d like in an apartment, the Doorsteps Swipe app would be happy to tell you. The company likens its service to the popular dating site Tinder, which matches couples based on their reactions to pictures of prospective dates.
If you’re an apartment-hunter looking at properties through its app, you can give a thumbs up or thumbs down to the photographs you’ve seen. After a few of those, it claims, its algorithm gets a sense of what you find attractive, and will offer you feedback about what you like and dislike in terms of price and apartment amenities, to help you tailor your search.
Forrent.com Much of the rental industry seems to target its services to singles, couples and roommates, so people with kids may have to work harder to find an appropriate rental. ForRent.com has introduced a filter for schools based on verified attendance zones.
Renterresume.co One area of burgeoning interest in the multifamily apartment world is the development of tools to help landlords screen prospective tenants quickly.
RenterResume says its app has targeted its tenant-qualifying services toward small and midsize property managers. Based on criteria chosen by the landlord, the app will screen and provide approvals in real time, according to the company. There’s no cost to the landlord. The would-be tenant pays a flat fee that can be applied to applications with landlords who use the service.
Zumper.com In the same vein, Zumper charges tenants a fee to use its Zumper Rental Application (aka Zapp), and in return will attach a credit report to rental applications they send to landlords.
Renters who use the app can send Zapp to any rental listings they find on zumper.com that display the Zapp logo. The company says it is aiming to create an industry standard for the apartment-rental application form. The Zapp feature began with San Francisco listings and plans to expand to Chicago, New York, Boston and Los Angeles.
And, Zumper reports that it surveyed monthly apartment costs for vacant units on its site (it claims to have a half-million listings) for August.
The survey found that among median rents for one-bedroom units, the six most-expensive locations were San Francisco ($3,100); New York ($2,995); Boston ($2,250); Washington ($2,100); Miami ($1,750) and Chicago ($1,737).
Twitter @maryumberger
