While home prices are falling, the rental market heats up across the country. Zillow’s Real Estate Market Reports show annual rents rising in nearly 70 percent of markets tracked by the Zillow Rent Index. By contrast, only 14 percent of markets Zillow covers reported home value increases over the same time period.
What does this mean for renters hunting for a new place to live? It means that finding a rental has become much more competitive, making it necessary for renters to be equipped with all the tools they need to quickly find a home or apartment.
Renters shop differently than buyers, and look at many homes quickly in specific locations and in a short amount of time. Enter Zillow Rentals for Android™ App. Launched today, Zillow Rentals is Zillow’s first dedicated rentals app, created specifically to address renters’ needs by organizing listings in an easily-accessible way and allowing them to shop for the right home on location — in the neighborhood where they want to live.
Among other features, Zillow Rentals for Android is the only rentals app that gives renters access to Rent Zestimates – Zillow’s estimated rent prices on more than 100 million U.S. homes that help landlords and tenants figure out how much they should be paying for rent.
Additionally, the app allows rental shoppers to:
- Compare and contrast favorite homes on a side-by-side list, a rental app feature exclusive to Zillow.
- Draw one or more boundaries around neighborhoods to narrow a search by geography.
- Use Android’s voice search capabilities to quickly search for-rent homes in an area.
- Quickly browse color-coded results organized by time on market, so renters know which homes are new to the market and which have already been viewed.
- Automatically receive on-screen notifications when new rental homes matching search criteria hit the market, with no log-in or sign-up required.
- Contact landlords by phone or email instantly. These properties are automatically added to the renter’s list of favorites with a time stamp to help keep track of when landlords were contacted.
Take Zillow Rentals for a spin, available for free to download in the Google Play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zillow.android.rentals.
Don’t have an Android device? Zillow operates the most popular suite of mobile real estate apps with dedicated apps available on every major platform. Find the right Zillow App for you and take your house hunting with you anywhere you go.