Regardless of whether you’re looking to rent or buy, house hunting can be simultaneously one of the most thrilling and stressful tasks you’ll ever tackle. Between budget, location, condition, and countless other factors, there are tons of moving parts to consider when you’re scoping out a new place.
With its easy-to-use interface and well-rounded extras, Trulia Real Estate makes tracking down leads and comparing potential abodes a smooth, user-friendly process. Getting started is a snap too, since all you have to do is select a location and plug in any important criteria you’re looking for, ranging from price range and property type to square footage and number of bedrooms. From there, Trulia plots out all of the available properties in the area by their location and price on the map, which can be scaled to adjust your viewing field and the number of listings.
Gathering as much information as possible is critical when house hunting, and Trulia puts a lot of data at your fingertips. Tapping a house on the map or sidebar brings up a description, photos, tax and pricing history, and others helpful details – including contact info for local real estate agents in the immediate vicinity. After setting up a free account, you can even save your top listings for quick reference and easy comparison, and there’s an option to sign up to receive alerts on the status of your favorite homes. And the app itself is free, so you can continue to scrimp and save for a new dwelling while digging into all of this useful info.
In addition to its core features, a handy range of advanced options rounds out this versatile app. To give you a different perspective on the area you’re looking at, color-coded heat map overlays can be applied to filter your results by various pricing configurations and neighborhood boundaries. You can even toggle nearby amenities like banks, grocery stores, eateries, and schools to see where they are in proximity to the listings you’re viewing – an important consideration for any prospective renter or home buyer.
The Best is a weekly column in which we spotlight the most helpful or impressive iOS app to fit a certain need, whether it's a part of your day-to-day life or just something cool that might come in handy down the line.
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