Finding an apartment used to mean reading ads in newspapers and driving around town to check out potential places to live. These days, apartment-finding websites make the search easy and convenient. Here are the top 10 apartment-finding sites that will help you select the perfect new dwelling at the right price.
Rent.com: Best Website to Find Apartments Using Filters
Rent.com offers a wide variety of search filters. For example, search for pet-friendly apartments or properties with utilities included in the rent, as well as apartments with features such as air conditioning, washer/dryer, walk-in closets, or disability access.
Built-in Moving Center supplies free moving quotes based on the size and location of your current apartment, when you’re moving, and your destination.
The selection of apartments is smaller than some sites.
Many listings are for apartment complexes with multiple units available.
Many apartment complexes on the site offer virtual tours.
ForRent.com: Best Apartment Finder App/Website for Those Who Crave Details
This apartment finder provides highly specific information about apartment complexes. Beyond a detailed overview of property features such as pet policies and proximity to shopping, you get a photo gallery, videos, and floorplans with many listings.
Offers helpful resources such as an apartment rental checklist.
Most of the listings are for properties owned by large management companies.
A built-in calculator also helps determine how much rent you can afford to pay.
Zumper: Most Price-Sensitive Apartment Hunting Site
Zumper is especially sensitive to pricing considerations. The site presents median rental prices for specific cities, for instance, and the map view shows sample prices for rentals throughout a selected area.
Has unique search filters, such as the ability to search for Section 8 apartments and short-term rentals, as well as searching by neighborhood within a city.
You can get details about a rental from your search results, but the amount of information varies considerably from one apartment or property to the next.
Hotpads: Most Feature-Packed Apartment Finder
During your search, this feature-rich site shows you a map of the area alongside a list view. In the map view, select building icons to see details and photos of specific apartment listings. Photos also include Google Street View.
Shows you how long the apartment has been listed on the site.
Lots of features on the site.
Filters are more plentiful on some other sites.
Built-in search filters include the type of dwelling, price range, number of baths and bedrooms, rental types, and property types. Select from rental types such as regular, sublet, corporate, and room for rent, as well as from property types such as apartment, condo, duplex, house, and townhouse.
If you register with the site, save listings as favorites.
Apartments.com: Best Apartment Website If You’re Bilingual
Available in both English- and Spanish-language versions, Apartments.com provides extensive apartment listings, while also allowing you to be highly specific in your searches. For example, search for cheap apartment rentals, luxury properties, or elevator buildings.
Using a “Plan Your Commute” search filter, specify the commute time you want from your apartment to your job, be it by driving, walking, bicycling, or public transportation.
Though the site offers neighborhood guides for some cities, these guides aren’t necessarily available for all neighborhoods within those cities, including some with highly desirable rentals.
By default, you receive a map view. Use a built-in drawing tool to specify the borders for your geographic search, then turn to a polygon tool to drill down into listings in smaller geographic parts of the overall search area.
Craiglist: One of the Best Websites to Find Apartments Worldwide
A longtime go-to for apartment seekers, Craigslist offers numerous listings through its local sites worldwide. Many listings are reasonably priced apartments from smaller landlords.
The site includes a decent set of filters. Search by fee/no fee, square footage, pet and smoking policies, wheelchair access, laundry, and parking.
The user interface seems kind of clunky and old-fashioned by today’s standards.
You might come across duplicate listings and some rental scams.
Craigslist delivers a list view, but property owners and agents can opt to post location maps and photo and video tours of the apartment. Dates for open houses are also easy to find.
Although Craigslist doesn’t have its own mobile apps, the site does load on smartphones. Third-party mobile apps are also available, such as CPlus for Craigslist - Officially Licensed, provided for both Android and iOS.
Apartment Guide: Best for Getting a Virtual Tour of Apartment Complexes
If you enjoy finding out about layouts and amenities before setting foot in your prospective apartment, Apartment Guide could be for you; most listings go hand-in-hand with Airbnb, photos, videos, and/or 3D tours.
You can write apartment reviews.
Most listings are for apartment complexes from large management companies.
Apartment Guide is chock-full of filters. Search an entire state or by nearby colleges or military bases, for example.
RentHop: Best Apartment-Finder Website for Urban Dwellers
If you’re moving to a big U.S. city, it’s a breeze to conduct highly granular apartment searches on RentHop for virtually any neighborhood. Search through a list view, but the site’s drag-and zoom-enabled map interface is more fun.
Each listing comes with very well informed property and neighborhood profiles, right down to names of specific stores and restaurants nearby.
Offers price comparisons with similar apartments in the neighborhood.
This website only serves map metro areas in the U.S.
RentHop also gives each apartment a HopScore, based on the freshness and quality of the listing and the property manager’s reputation. However, a HopScore lower than 95 percent is seemingly rare.
RentHop has a RentHop Manager app for landlords and brokers on both iOS and Android, as well as a RentHop Apartments for Rent app for iOS and Android.
PadMapper: Most Map-Happy Website
PadMapper uses listings from websites such as Apartment Guide and Airbnb to create comprehensive rental maps. In addition, landlords can use the mobile app to post listings directly to PadMapper. Listings are also available for Canada.
Includes features for hiding listings of no interest to you.
Apartment listings not as abundant as they used to be now that Craiglist listings are no longer included.
Use a built-in drawing tool to designate simultaneous searches of multiple sections of a map. A “live near” mapping tool lets you find apartments within designated distances of points of interest, such as grocery stores.
Virtual Assistant: Your Voice Search Alternative
If you’re not big on data entry, or you simply find it fun to play around with virtual assistants, try using Google Assistant, Siri or Cortana, either in your web browser or as a mobile app, to search for apartments.
Get results quickly, whether asking for “apartments near me” or apartments in another city or zip code.
Your search results with a virtual assistant will likely be limited to apartment finding websites, realtors, and big apartment complexes, so a virtual assistant won’t ultimately save you much time.
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