Find Your Next Apartment Through Social Media
Social media has incorporated itself into our everyday lives, whether it is by keeping in touch with friends and family, reading the news, or reading about life hacks. There are a million ways to use social media; one of them is finding an apartment.
Using social networks makes it easy to stay organized and connect with people throughout the duration of your apartment hunting. Forget about bookmarking webpages and trying to keep track of different properties. With these social media outlets, you will be able to stay organized and reach out to landlords or property management companies directly.
Some may argue that Facebook is the king of social media right now. With targeted advertisements, everyone and their mother’s opinions about something, and recipe videos, it can be easy to find apartments to rent. Search through business pages of property management companies, real estate agents, and landlords that advertise their properties.
Join Facebook groups specifically for your school. Some property owners will post their vacant rentals in groups. Facebook also allows you to directly message owners and companies. Unlike an email, you can see if they saw your message and can interact with them in real time.
Now powered by Facebook, Instagram is another great social media network to find future housing. Though less geared towards the written description of properties, apartment hunters can admire pictures of properties, because who actually reads the description anyways?
Just like on Facebook, make sure to follow different property management companies, real estate agents, and landlords that focus on marketing their properties through Instagram. With its recently added feature, you can directly message, or DM, an agent or landlord about your interest in a certain property. You can also share images of properties with your future roommates directly from the app.
RentSocial
Through RentSocial, you and your roommates will always be on the same page about when showings take place and what apartments you are all interested in. Each of you will have to create a profile to join the site and connect with each other. Then, put in your criteria for an apartment – number of bedrooms, bathrooms, size, location, etc. Search through the results and save the apartments you are interested in.
Having all of the apartments you like in one place makes it easy to keep track of them and helps you remember to share them with your roommates. RentSocial also helps you coordinate when you will all see apartments together.
Naked Apartments
Extremely similar to RentSocial, Naked Apartments allows you to join by using your Facebook profile. You can coordinate showings with your roommates through this social network and share different apartments with each other.
What makes this website stand out from other apartment sites is that you can see ratings of apartments, landlords, and brokers right on the website. Reading reviews will save you from a year of maintenance issues and dealing with an inattentive landlord.
StreetEasy
If you’re a user of Pinterest, then you’ll get the hang of StreetEasy quickly. Similar in thought and design, you can save apartments you would like to see or keep track of in a folder or board. With the tile-like display, it’s easy to view what you have saved. StreetEasy also allows you to create a schedule of showings and appointments you have made for the apartments you have saved.
There is also a social aspect to the site with forums and message boards about different landlords, apartments, locations, and common renter problems. Feel free to reach out to the community with any questions you have about an area or renting an apartment in general.
RoomSurf
If you are someone who would rather live with random roommates instead of risking your friendships by becoming roommates, RoomSurf is the social media network for you! Create a profile and answer questions provided by the website to be placed in certain groups and connected with people you would pair nicely with.
You can look over different people’s profiles and interact with them through the website before making a decision to live together. Speak with multiple people at once and find as many roommates as you’d like!
Apartable
For those of you who dread joining yet another social media network and creating yet another profile, Apartable is the website for you when apartment hunting. Stay organized by saving apartments you are interested in and sharing them with your roommates. This website will also give you a complete history of the property including when it was built. It will also break down monthly costs for you!
Through the website, you can fill out a contact form rather than separately emailing the owner of the property, which makes reaching out much easier.