Choosing the Best Real Estate App

real estate app

Finding best real estate app for buying a home in MA.

Real estate apps have put the real estate market in the hands of the buyers, making searching for homes easier than ever.  You can now see what is available at anytime, anywhere, learn a great deal about the homes, and have open house times at your finger tips.

After trying several apps on my Android, I’m reviewing the pros and cons of each so you can choose the one best suited for your needs.

Zillow.  Zillow is a huge name in online real estate resources.  I appreciate some of the information they gather and redistributed, but I’ve never been a big fan.  Mostly because their “Zestimates” are so ridiculous.

Zillow’s app gives a lot of options and great flexibility in creating searches.  But make sure you have the “Type” of home checked correctly.  The default is to show homes for sale, for rent, sold, and estimated values all on the same map if you are not careful.  For me, this app is too busy, and has lots of ads popping up.

I’m sure Zillow is proud of its estimated value on each home on the map – but the Zestimates are notoriously inaccurate and misleading.  It has my West Roxbury home estimated at $327,321, and the square footage at 1,351.  Wrong wrong wrong.

Pros: flexibility, ability to draw your area of interest, sold homes.

Cons: busy layout, pop-up ads, too much information, pop-up survey.

Trulia. The Trulia app, like their website, is clean and easy to navigate.  It also has a keyword search and lists for sale, for rent, and sold properties separately – which makes sense.  Looking at listing detail is a breeze and Tulia makes it simple to contact the listing agent with questions.   You can email, save or share any listing easily.

The Trulia app has ads.  I almost bought some ad space until I realized that I’ve never  responded to a mobile app advertisement.  Since advertising just started a couple months ago, you may be spared the pop-downs in most areas, but not for long.

The agent you will see both on the Zillow and Trulia ads are NOT the listing agents.  You will find the listing agent or office  on listing detail page.

Note there are two Trulia apps, one is Trulia for Agents, which I use, but makes no sense for non-agents.

Pros: easy to navigate, keyword search.

Cons: ads, no ability to draw area of interest.

Realtor.  Realtor.com’s app is my favorite one, which I use constantly.  It feels it was build around buyer needs and who knows buyers better than the National Association of Realtors?  It has the ability to search for homes easily, with as wide or as narrow criteria as you like.  You can save searches or save individual homes.

This real estate app allows you to save your friends’ and agent’s email addresses in the settings.  You can then send listings of interest in just two clicks.  It has been easier for me to plan my open house tours with this app, and I love that it saves all my recently viewed homes.

Search options are for homes for sale, or rent, open houses, recent sales, saved searches, recent searches or area highlight – where you draw the area of interest.  Despite the many options, the interface is intuitive and does not feel busy or overwhelming.

Another feature I’ve found nowhere else is “scout.”  When using the area highlighter on a map, the “scout” option gives you basic sales averages around a particular neighborhood.

Pros: easy to navigate, area highlighter and scout feature, saves your agent’s info, directions and street view, organized and complete.

Cons: I don’t know if they’ll have ads, I’ve seen none yet.

Raveis App.  This is the William Raveis’ Real Estate App.  Because I’m a Raveis agent, I’m partial.   I used this app the most before the Realtor app, but I still open it regularly. Like most things Raveis does, the app is clean, easy to navigate, and intuitive.  When you open a listing, you can have a street view, navigation, nearby amenities, and community info.  The amenities information includes area restaurants, schools, supermarket, hospitals and public transportation options!

You can start your mortgage pre-approval and insurance quote directly from the app – and I highly recommend both the Raveis insurance and mortgage companies.  The Raveis logo and phone number is the only promotion you’ll find. There are no pop-up ads and no distractions from your home search.

Pros: easy to navigate, community information, area amenities information (!!!), no ads, easy to share.

Cons: no ability to draw your area of interest, no recent sales information, connects you with the Raveis call center, not a local agent.

Redfin: I learned about the Redfin real estate app from my client Matt last week.   Redfin has property history on each listings, which no other app I’ve tried provides.  Property history is interesting but more important once you are ready to make an offer.  Regardless, if you are curious about recent history of properties, use this app.

The Redfin app only serves specific metropolitan areas, so don’t automatically assume this will work for you.  It has worked well in Greater Boston so far.

Remember this app is company specific, so everywhere you look you are encouraged, with big yellow buttons, to sign-up for more information.  Slightly annoying.  A positive feature is your ability to add your own photo to the listing information, so you can better remember what you saw.

The “nearby open houses” feature has a defined circle of open houses and I haven’t figured out how to change it.  I can’t say I enjoy using the app, as the emphasis is more about the company than the buyer’s needs.

Pros: property history, no pop-up ads (so far)

Cons: lacking information, less flexible than the other apps, not fun – doesn’t inspire exploration like the others.

I love that real estate data has been made transparent and readily available to the buyers.   Now buyer agents are rewarded for guidance through a complex process rather than hording information.  I hope I saved you some time in choosing the right real estate app for you.  Have fun exploring!

If you find other interesting features or more real estate apps worth considering, write me.

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