Type of app: Real estate search
Platform/where to buy: iOS, Android
Developer: Zillow
Description: #1 Real Estate App on iTunes and “Best Real Estate App” by O’Reilly Media
Major features: The app lets you search by address or town, and you can filter by price, number of bedrooms, for sale and for rent, etc. In addition, you can look up the transaction history of properties, find out how long they’ve been listed on the market, and even get a “zestimate” of what Zillow thinks the property is worth based on similar homes in the area.
Ease of use/Overall performance: Theoretically this app is easy to use. It’s certainly fast and responsive, and it works great if you plug in a specific address. However, I have found it to be nearly useless in seeking out homes for sale in specific towns. Searching for specific towns brings up listings in neighboring ones, which is useless if you don’t want to shop for homes in a nearby town. There does not appear to be a setting to change this, and it’s a real problem. We’re searching for a new home currently, and we have specific areas where we want to live. Neighboring towns are off our list for various reasons, most especially flooding. So it was beyond frustrating when we decided to randomly check out some open houses while running errands today, but Zillow stubbornly showed us open houses in a town we wouldn’t live in if they paid us to live there. We weren’t even in the town where the listings were, we were in the town we wanted to find open houses! It got to the point where I gave up and switched to Trulia.
Would use again/recommend?: Absolutely not. The Zillow mobile website works just as well without the awful location bug.
Suggested changes/wish list for updates: FIX THE LOCATION BUG!!! It is, no joke, impossible to find localized listings, at least in New Jersey.
Price: Free