Top Free Property Marketing and House Hunting Apps

Looking to find your ideal property without the hassle of wading through websites, listings or dealing with agents on a regular period? With apps becoming increasingly popular for the service industry we have identified the best free house-hunting and property marketing apps for the UK market. Here is a run-down of our pick of the best top 4 apps on the market:

1.  Rightmove

Rightmove boasts a plentiful database of both ‘for sale’ and ‘rental’ properties. Features include the universally used abilities to save properties, search current location (gps location) with some nifty new features as well. You can search for properties that are subject to contract (STC) - another term for ‘under offer’ - so you can maybe nip in to buy a property. This is especially helpful if you feel for any reason the contract exchange may break down. The map is a bit fiddly with green blocks used to display properties’ location, making it a bit difficult to see exactly where the property is.

2.  Zoopla

The Zoopla app is a bright and colourful interface which automatically searches for properties near you on opening. This can be helpful but quite often leaves you waiting longer for something that is not why you opened the app in the first place. However, once you get past this the app contains some nice features. A keyword search helps if you are looking for house-related features – for example a garden space or certain amenities and appliances. However the best feature of this app has to be marketplace data you can collect. It is easy to find average house prices for the area (by postcode) and recent houses’ selling prices, so you can guarantee you are paying or listing for the right price.

3.  Nestoria (PropertyFinderUK for android, iproperty for I-Phone)

This app included a nice ‘share’ search for properties, along with for sale and rented. This is particularly useful for say students or people on a budget looking for shared accommodation. It also includes a GPS location finder for localised searches (although this author had to wait for 3 attempts before this feature worked). The map feature was nice but unfortunately was prone to updating the location with every scroll of the map. Apart from this the app was a nice addition to house-hunting options.

4.  Property Wide

Property wide mixed the traditional with the digital. It included a nice ‘branch locator’ function, allowing the browser to easily get in touch in person rather than over the phone or by email. This also helped if an app-browser was using the app to sell their property rather than looking for one. An easy-to-use app with slick moving filter bars over the traditional drop-down menus make for a pleasant browsing experience. Where property wide is let down is the lack of map function. This is essentially a fundamental tool missing and has the potential to turn people away.

Each app listed has something different from the previous, and each offers good browsing features. For data and information Zoopla is racing ahead – especially with its property marketing tools - like house and recently sold price indicators. However, whether this is an accurate tool has yet to be verified. If you are looking for a house or flat share you will no doubt be better off with the Nestoria app, which, once over the initial fiddly options, shows a good demographic of options across the UK for property hunters on a budget. Rightmove has a great database of properties and has all the usual features whereas Property Wide, although lacking in map function, is very easy to use. With apps rising in popularity and increasingly being integrated into a more digital age, it is easy to be put off by the range in options available. This list will hopefully narrow down your options when it comes to something as important as finding your dream next home.

Sandy Halliday, a PR and Marketing fanatic for London Marketing Company Beattie Communications, is on-hand to help you in all subjects of offline and online marketing communications.