As more Americans opt for rentals than home ownership, the competition for rentals remains evident. Consequently, the increase in demand is hiking rents in a number of markets.
Bear in mind that comparing rentals can be difficult. Nevertheless, you must establish which rental is suitable and ensure you get the most value for your money.
Fortunately, apartment hunters no longer have to scan newspaper classifieds to locate a place to live. Furthermore, any renter can access countless listings from different platforms. If you’re wondering how to compare rentals rates effectively, consider these options.
Apartment Guide
If you’re seeking a site that offers a plethora of floorplans and photos, this is the platform to use. Apartment Guide offers 360-degree tours, photos, and videos for most listings.
Furthermore, the listings, most of which are from huge management companies, have intuitive icons to signify amenities, for instance if they allow pets or if a dishwasher exists.
The site has numerous filters, including those that enable you to search the neighborhood and locate nearby activities such as hiking.
My Apartment Map
My Apartment Map has a number of features beyond mere indexing listings. You can go to Google Streetview to examine your new neighborhood, browse a map of social spots and local businesses and obtain rental data for your new neighborhood and city.
This allows you to compare the rates of the apartments you’re considering against city averages; the handy feature will particularly be effective if you’re relocating to a city with an unfamiliar market.
Additionally, you can search by colleges to view listings for off-campus housing neighboring that college along with searching by neighborhood and city. In the event that you don’t find anything that appeals to you, you can set up RSS and email alerts for notification when listings that meet your requirements appear.
Hotpads
Hotpads is an incredibly dynamic and in depth search engine for rentals across the nation. Besides offering the basic price/city searches, available in any apartment search engine, the platform has heat maps.
When searching for a rental with this tool, you can overlay heat maps of different data onto the map such as household income, median rent, and foreclosure data. You’ll discover that the heat maps provide a view of your future neighborhood; a simple listing can’t do so.
Besides the heat maps, every listing has a breakdown of how the cost of the listing you’re considering compares to others in the city, zip code, state, and county. You can use the site to search for apartments as well as a room to sublet.
While there are no filters for amenities or neighborhoods, you can search for keywords. Another benefit of the tool is that it indicates how long a property has been listed and shows the degree of interest in the property by indicating the number of times a listing has been viewed and the number of times the agent has been contacted.
For Rent
The tool’s strength lies with the comprehensive information it offers concerning apartment buildings. You can get an overview of the building amenities often accompanied by a photo gallery and short video.
For Rent also features floorplans, moving quotes, and a calculator to help you establish the amount of rent you can afford.
Final Thoughts
Although the task of comparing rental rates can be demanding, you have various options from which to choose. If you’re wondering whether your chosen rental is suitably priced, ensure you capitalize on these online tools.
For more information on how to compare rental rates effectively, contact us at Apartment Agents or leave a comment.
