The population of countries around the world tends to increase, creating great pressure on housing demand, so in order to meet this increase, the need to make the best app to find apartments for rent is getting higher every day.
The two big players in this new type of rental market are Zumper and Zillow, a real estate rental market that earns about 55 million dollars a year, while Zillow’s annual revenue reaches 1,3 billion dollars.
Those applications will act as virtual brokers but are less risky and more effective.
8 Steps to Make an App to Find Apartments for Rent
In this article, we will learn together “How to make the best app to find apartments for rent?” and what needs to be done to provide a great rental search experience, suitable for tenants and landlords, to ensure good property management, and persuade users to stay with their services.
Let’s find out how to make the best app to find apartments for rent!
1. Become User
Put yourself in the shoes of the user when looking for rental properties, users just want to find and apply for rental services simply and also affordable. That’s why you need a powerful filter to convince users to use your app. What they need to see is:
- Location
- Price range
- Type of apartment
- Number of rooms, bedrooms, and bathrooms
- Listings with or without photos
- Amenities
- Length of lease
- Pet restrictions
Your app must be able to show users what they need in particular, including pricing and location.
In addition, your best app to find apartments for rent must be able to sort search results by price and distance from home to where they want to, such as if you want to find a house near the school for your child, earning $300 per month, your application must automatically localize an area of the map and give results close to the user’s wishes.
It will be a great feature for users, they will not need to spend too much time applying multiple filters.
Tinder is one of the famous dating apps that attract users thanks to its strong location filter that helps users find “Mr. Right” that suits their life, so why don’t you help users find “Mr. Right Apartment” suitable for them?
2. Like Tinder, like your app
Do you know the Tinder app? When you match with a friend, Tinder will show a message notifying that you have been in a match and whether or not to text with that person will be your decision. So apply that method to the app to find apartments for rent. You will allow users to “Like” or “Favorite” the apartment to which they “Match” then users can save favorite lists so they can come back and review them.
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3. Verification
The psychology of users when looking for long-term rental apartments in addition to the price also has the image of that apartment.
Nobody wants to live in a place that doesn’t match their will, right? So pictures of apartments are extremely important, but they may not be the real pictures of apartments for rent.
So, to make the best app to find apartments for rent, you will probably provide “Bluetick” for rented apartment images to prove that the pictures posted on your app has real images, not fake ones.
You can censor in many ways, such as making online video calls to confirm images or going to your home, etc. That is also the way Tinder applies to its users, reducing the risk of information fraud and convincing users that they are truly reputable.
3. Let users “Subscribe” to that location
When you finish watching a youtube video, what do YouTubers say when they finish a video “If you like my video, please like, subscribe to get new video notifications and share with your friends.” So why don’t you apply this method to the app to find your rental apartment by letting users “Subscribe to” the location they had “Match” before and informing users about deals or new leases? Why not?
4. Let them meet each other
Like dating apps, the success of the best app to find apartments for rent is that when they meet in real life, the apps to find apartments for rent are just as successful when tenants and landlords meet and collaborate to go to the deal. Support them by providing an online chat so they can more easily exchange information and negotiate rental issues or arrange a schedule to have an apartment tour in real life. Create a custom platform-specific real-time messenger on your own.
5. Showing the background of tenants and landlord
You must ensure that when users choose your application to find apartments for rent to be really safe and vice versa, the landlords will also be guaranteed their apartments but this is really hard for you to check customer backgrounds and landlords so why don’t we let users rate the background of real estate agents, the only thing customers need to do is check the reviews and comments agency.
As with Grab, users can see the driver’s rating and the driver will be able to see the customer’s rating before deciding whether to accept the customer too. Or you can allow tenants to prepare a credit report and apply for rental directly on the platform, while agents and building managers can easily see tenants’ backgrounds and screen them.
6. Using your “Hard Power”
Or you can use your “Hard power” when tenants or landlords have too many negative comments or their star ratings are too low, you can temporarily close their account and find out the reason. In this way, you can add credibility to your best app to find apartments for rent.
7. Retaining tenants
Once tenants and landlords have come to an agreement, they probably won’t need you anymore but no, don’t let that happen.
You can offer a few more shipping services through your app and will offer discounts on successful deals via the app or you can cooperate with reputable cleaning and repair services because when renting, there will be damage and I am sure tenants will call for help from landlords and landlords will have to call the service agencies, etc but if you already provide those services, what tenants need to do is call you and you will immediately send a team to repair or clean up, and avoid disturbing your landlords (but remember to have a hot deal for your customers !!!
If possible, partner with e-wallet applications to have your customers pay for electricity, water, and wifi right on your app.
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8. Promoting
Helping businesses better promote your rental search platform and provide advertising services for businesses of course, they need to buy those service packages, which can be:
- Posting rental listings on partner sites
- Building websites with custom domain names for businesses
- Placing listing widgets on third-party websites
- Appearing on the first page of the website or at the top of search results
- Sending quality leads
- Showing featured results of user searches to agents
A Final Thought
Finally, rental search giants often sell ad space to businesses such as mortgage lenders and companies that provide interior design and moving services.
The recipe for success is solving all of a tenant’s problems before, during, and after renting.
If you’re also planning to help renters and agents eliminate their rental pains, there’s definitely room for one more best app to find apartments for rent and in case you need our help building it, we’d be happy to guide you from the very concept and choosing a technology stack to a successful product.