What website will you use to find your next apartment/flat?
Long time lurker, occasional commenter, and first-time poster here.
I'm building a product that "acquires" data from apartment listing sites in order to make the overall search process easier for renters. I'm specifically targeting units for rent/lease and I would appreciate your help in answering the following questions:
- What websites do you find most helpful when you're looking for a place to rent?
2)Do you find yourself using multiple sites for your search? If so, how many?
I use Sulekha, craigslist, apartements.com,
Thanks!
Majority of US people look through Craiglist
I'd have to disagree, maybe at some point they use it, but for many it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
I've used Craiglist 5-6 times last year, and never had a problem.
Even if the "bad taste in the mouth" might be true for some folks, it's a highly visited (520m visits a month) site and #1 for Shopping/Classifieds.
In Spain (Barcelona at least, but I think generally) www.idealista.com is the go-to option for pretty much everybody. I tend to use that alone to get a few initial viewings, and then typically the agencies handling the viewings will have some suggestions themselves too.
Thanks @buildfocus. Quick question do you use the favorites feature on idealista (guardar)? Or how else would you keep track of your candidate apartments?
Zillow, padmapper, and apartments.com
Thanks Max!
Thanks!
I'm in Australia and will be looking for a new house to rent in about 4 weeks.
We'll be using domain.com.au and realestate.com.au
I like to be able to search for specific attributes(for me land area since we want acreage, and pets allowed).
cool! i'm basically trying to validate that conditions are semi-universal in that not every site has all the listings. UK is the only one that seems super consolidated.
In Australia I'd say 95% of listings are on both Domain and RealEstate. But there is very occasionally one on just one of them.
There are a few other sites that occasionally have ones not on either of them like Gumtree which is like craigslist has quite a few like that but they are usually less desirable rentals for me at least. And there are a few much smaller sites in Australia that focus on rural land/farms that have unique properties usually by owner and not managed though.
I think another thing to keep in mind at least in the states it is this way: everyone eventually gets the listings, but if you want the best spots, you have to be proactive. That involves perusing large property management sites and the like where listings appear before they are synced to the big metasearches.
Yes this is true and was definitely a consideration when I lived in Sydney where you'd have to show up to open houses with the application already completed and probably an offer for a higher rent if you wanted a chance at getting it. Though luckily these days I'm in a regional area and at the top end of the price range so there is generally not much competition and most places stay on the market for weeks or months.
Zillow and Facebook Marketplace
thanks @satoshi
Kind of curious why you put "acquires" in quotes as in they have public apis or scraping?
I think those kind of "SaaS products?" are interesting to make like "Scott's flights" or other travel related sites, how do you start to get that data to use unless you get big and companies offer it to you to be part of your traffic I don't know.
For me I'm currently labeled as a tainted individual(bad credit) so I'm actually scared that I won't be able to get a place to live. So yeah, I gotta figure that out myself, through Craigslist or something.
I'm not sure why I did it lol, sorta trying to play to the culture of the site. I know the biz goal is to acquire the data but scrape is almost a 4 letter word ;)
I think you're saying its interesting how products like this get started because of chicken and egg problems where its prohibitively expensive to act as distributor when you have no traffic because noone will work with you.
Interestingly enough my angle bypasses all of that. Stay tuned!
to answer your question I use apartmentlist.com to search for apartments.
reason I use it. because I like how they group your choices base on certain factors you might need or want in your apartment search.
Thanks @regularwebguy -> seems like many people have one particular favorite. I do too, I just find no site is comprehensive which is a problem in competitive markets.
Also an upvote on the post would be huge to increase visibility :)
Yes I agree, Nick.
To provide additional context: I'm trying to dive into whether other people face a similar problem as me in just being able to keep track of all the potential candidates (listings) that they find across the many different apartment listing websites.
As well as getting a feel for the most popular ones out there.
I'm not sure if this is helpful but in the UK I use Rightmove, On the market and Zoopla. Although Rightmove is my website of choice.
Second Rightmove here in the UK, it has by far the largest number of listings for both renting and buying. It would be very rare to find a listing on any of the other sites that is not already on Rightmove. Their site and app are pretty solid, the whole letting process is ripe for disruption though, in my experience letting agents add no value whatsoever in the UK.
That's interesting. The US doesn't have quite the same level of consolidation from my observation.
it probably reflects the different nature of the industry in the US and the UK. I understand that realtors tend to be self employed in the US, whereas in the UK if I see a for sale sign I assume that there is a business with a staff of at least 10 and a few high street offices behind it.
Very helpful Chris. I'm trying to dive into whether other people face a similar problem as me in just being able to keep track of all the potential candidates (listings) that they find across the many different websites. If you could throw me a bone and upvote the post that would be awesome... trying to get as much visibility on this as possible.