Buying a home is hard enough. Luckily, there are quite a few apps out there to make your life a bit easier. Here’s a look into a few reliable options that will help you out on the journey toward homeownership.
Trulia
Trulia can help you find more than just your dream home. Trulia checks more than just the essential boxes, like lot size, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and square footage. Trulia takes it a step further by including a mortgage calculator and an affordability cost breakdown. The app can also help link you up with a real estate agent.
The Trulia real estate app is designed to help you make sure the home of your dreams is located in the neighborhood of your dreams as well. The app’s built-in GPS includes helpful insights such as information on the local schools and a neighborhood crime map. The app also syncs up with Yelp to show you the best of the neighborhood’s restaurants and businesses.
Zillow
Zillow is a bit like the bread and butter of online homebuying. Not only is it one of the most popular and highly rated homebuying apps out there, it’s probably the most comprehensive. Zillow’s “Zestimate” functionality uses algorithms to calculate estimated home values, which is a helpful first step in figuring out what your current home will appraise for, while also giving you an idea of the general home values for neighborhoods you’re interested in moving to.
Another great bonus when using Zillow is the exclusive listings. Zillow also sends instant notifications of new listings, price drops, and it notifies you when homes you’re interested in are sold. All of these features will give you an edge when you’re searching for a home in a competitive housing market. If you’re using Zillow, you’ll also enjoy access to their mortgage calculators, interest rates, and personalized loan quotes.
RedFin
RedFin acts as both an app and a brokerage firm linked up to the Redfin real estate company. One of the most exciting features of this app is the ability to filter search results by upcoming open houses. Even if this doesn’t lead to a home purchase, it’s a great way for you to get a feel of a potential neighborhood. The standard real estate fees for RedFin average around 1.5% per listing, versus the typical 2%-3%. The typical buyer can expect to receive an average refund of $1,700 back on agent fees.
RedFin also offers a “Hot Homes” feature that highlights listings with an 80% chance of accepting an offer on the home within the span of two weeks. This will help to give you a competitive edge in your housing search.
Bigger Pockets
Bigger Pockets is great for those who are new to the real estate market. The app offers a wide range of free resources, including informative blog posts, guides, eBooks, podcasts, and a forum. Bigger Pockets allows you to learn more about the process of buying a home that will increase in value and how you can get the most out of your real estate investments. The app also acts links up to the Bigger Pockets website, a top resource for real estate investment information.
Contact Us
You may see retaining a real estate attorney as one less thing to worry about in the already complicated process of buying a home, but having a qualified real estate attorney involved with your homebuying process is essential. Title defects, transfers of deeds, and property defects are all examples of issues that can only be handled in qualified hands. It’s important that the right parties oversee your investment.
While your real estate agent may be great, their job is to sell the home. A real estate agent will be unable to guide you through the complex issues of legality that may arise throughout the homebuying process. Enlisting the services of Borders & Borders will ensure a homebuying process that ends with happy homeowners. Contact us today to get started.