Must-Have Homebuyer Apps

Buying a house is an exciting time, but a stressful one as well. More often than not, homebuyers are burdened with self-doubt, confusion over paperwork and industry-related jargon, and the general stress of making a huge financial commitment—all of which make it difficult to stay on the ball. Fortunately, however, there are apps for that.

Thanks to the wonderful blessing known as the Internet, homebuyers today have the opportunity to research real estate listings on their own time, learn more about specific neighborhoods, discover interior design tips, and more. And because they have access to these tools, they’re enabled to make better decisions and end up with a place they want to call home.

Here are the top apps every homebuyer should have:

Zillow
To help you during the home buying (or selling) process, Zillow’s Real Estate app displays listings and estimated value for all homes. This means you can view homes that are for sale and their selling prices, as well as information about neighboring houses, their worth, and the price they last sold for.

Homesnap
Homesnap is an augmented reality app that allows users to take a picture of a house and instantly obtain information about its value, when it last sold (and how much it sold for), number of bedrooms, and more. Certain homes will even allow you to view pictures of the interior and provide details about property tax records, school information, and more. The app obtains its information from a number of sources, including the Multiple Listing Service’s database, property tax records, and census data.

House Hunter
If you’re the type of person who takes notes of every house you visit, download House Hunter. The app allows users to not only record features of the house they like, but it also makes it easier to compare the ones you’re interested in. House Hunter lets you rank the importance of each feature and creates an overall score of the house so you can better evaluate each one.

Suburb Scout
Too often, people buy houses before discovering there’s a loud train that passes through the neighborhood or that they’re situated right below a common plane route for a nearby airport. Suburb Scout allows you to search for potential annoyances, including airports, landfills, railroads, sewage plants, and more.

Dictionary of Real Estate Terms
Contracts and other documents are filled with real estate jargon that can be difficult to understand. The Dictionary of Real Estate Terms will explain everything in a comprehensive way so you don’t have to stop and ask your realtor or mortgage lender to explain terms or phrases every few lines.

Photo Measures
Whether you’re looking for a house or are ready to decorate or renovate, you’ll need accurate dimensions of each room to furnish it. With Photo Measures, all you have to do is snap a pic of the room or whatever it is you want measurements of (e.g. cabinets, doors), and it’ll save the dimensions right to your phone.

ColorSmart
Not sure if you should paint the living room walls Dark Storm Cloud or Twilight Gray? With Behr’s ColorSmart app, you can take a picture of the room and add the color of your choice to the walls to see how it would look in your home. That will save you a couple hundred dollars and hours of hard labor.

Title Insurance Calculator
Okay, so this one might not be an app, but it’s a great (and accurate) tool that can help you determine if your title insurance company is charging you the rate you should be paying. At the end of the day, you could potentially save hundreds of dollars.