Easy Apartment Searching On Your iPhone

I haven’t had to go shopping for an apartment since before the iPhone. I have a love/hate relationship with the task. I love to see a new place and imagine a new home and how I could dress it up, but I hate all the driving around and making notes about everything. That part feels like work. These days, however, the iPhone spoils us with all sorts of ways to make things like this easier. You know the saying: “There’s an app for that.”

The MyNewPlace app
When provided the opportunity to give a paid review of this application, I have to admit that I hesitated. I really thought it would be some mediocre app and, having not been apartment shopping for years, I was unaware of MyNewPlace.com, which is actually one of the biggest apartment search sites on the web with over six million listings. Before even deciding to review this app, I made sure to watch the video below, and that’s what convinced me to give it a shot. The video provides a quick walk through of all the features and how they work.

Of course, to provide a fair review, I needed to download the application myself and come up with an apartment shopping scenario. I decided to re-enact my apartment shopping task when I was moving Michelle out here to live with me. We needed a two bedroom place with some nice features, a decent pool, and close to my office and also to a freeway as she didn’t know where her next job would be. Armed with some base criteria and my new app, I set out for an adventure (on my couch, that is).

Searching

The first thing you’re asked for is a city and state or a zip code to search. Alternatively, you can use GPS for location-based searching, but I wanted to search across town today. I’m all about the fastest route and this was it. After typing in the zip code at my office, I had 76 results, but I have criteria, remember? So I tapped the “Filter” button and all sorts of filtering options showed up on a new screen. I wanted two bedrooms so I could have a home office. Air conditioning is a must-have, as is laundry and a pool, so I turned all those filters on. After applying filters, I got a new list back, narrowed down to 30 results, but I want it to be close to the freeway, so I tap the “Map” button and up pops a map with 30 little flags. Here, I was able to move up and down through the list with a couple arrow keys or directly tap a flag for base info. I could then further investigate a property by tapping it’s info box.

Property details
Once a property has been selected, I want to see pricing details, photos, amenities, etc. I also want to know about deposits, pets, etc. The details area just says “Yes” for pets, which I have to assume means all pets are welcome. It also doesn’t show “Fitness Center” for one of the places I looked at like it does for other places, even though I know this complex has one. If that was a deal-breaker, I’d be avoiding a good complex for no reason. I’m unsure if that’s due to too many other amenities listed or the complex just didn’t include it when they submitted their data. From the details page, I can go to another map with just the one property listed, view photos, see a property description, see the unit options, call them, email them, email the information to a friend, save as a favorite, or enter notes and photos. The photo gallery is clean, offering a large view and five thumbnails along the bottom. I like that they accommodate more than five photos by just letting you flick the thumbnail list left or right for more. I think my property actually had twenty photos. You can also just ignore the thumbnails and flick right through the larger views. The property description page includes a thumbnail, name and address of the property, contact options, and a long blurb of text. In this case, the text included visible HTML that was neither parsed nor stripped, so that looked a little funny. The next option from the property’s profile page was “See Units” which just shows the available unit types and detail about each such as square footage, number of beds/baths, and monthly rent range. One of the little treats that brought it all home was the Notes & Photos area. Suppose I visited the property. I could note that it had a full (two-sink) counter in the bathroom and a large garden tub. Both are selling points for me but aren’t listed in the amenities. I could also take a few pictures during my walk through and they will be saved to this profile. As soon as I do either, it saves this property as a favorite. Of course, I can always get back to visited properties with the “Recents” and “Favorites” buttons on the starting screen.

My wish list
- Larger photos I can zoom in on.
- Floor plans.
- Some form of indicator on a button to let me know it is going to eject me from the app out to Google Maps or my email. (There should be a standard, actually, and all apps should follow it).
- More details in regards to amenities, etc.

Conclusion
For starters, you can hardly ever go wrong with free if an app is even a little useful, but how does it compare to the competition? To answer that question, I downloaded four more apartment search applications and put them through the same test scenario. Comparatively, the other applications I tried offered larger photos or more detail or in one case all sorts of things I didn’t care about, but none were as intuitive and functional. This app is very easy to use and for the most part, well thought out, but could use a couple extras like larger photos and more details.