If this is your first time buying a home, you’re probably overwhelmed by all of the apps out there. How do you know which ones are best for you? Do you need anything that helps you with mortgage? What about something that helps you decide what kind of house you want? With so many apps available, it’s hard to choose! To make your life easier, we’ve compiled a list of the top 5 apps for first-time home buyers. Best of luck on your home buying journey!
Table of Contents
Best Apps For First Time Home Buyers
BEST OVERALL
Zillow
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We chose Zillow as our best overall home buying app because of its massive scope in inventory and services. The app also provides free foreclosure data, pre-approval assistance, and customizable search filters.
Pros
Users have access to over 135 million homes
In participating markets, Zillow-owned houses are unoccupied and can be toured by interested parties without an agent or without an appointment because the houses can be unlocked through the app
Detailed search and filter criteria
Coordinate your search with a partner or roommate by tagging home features and sharing your favorites
Cons
The Zestimate algorithm uses tax records to produce results, which sometimes are inaccurate
Properties feature several agents. Only one of these is the actual lister. The others pay a premium amount to be featured and are often uninformed about the property.
Zillow was founded in 2006 by Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, former Microsoft executives and founders of Expedia. They launched the online real estate service company, Zillow.com, in Seattle, Washington.
Zillow’s home buying app is the best tool overall because it has the largest database at 135 million homes, a full suite of search features nationwide, and the ability to connect to agents for in-person service.
Zillow serves the full lifecycle of owning and living in a home: buying, selling, renting, financing, remodeling, and more. Under the Zillow brand, Zillow runs Zillow, Zillow Offers, Zillow Premier Agent, Zillow Home Loans, Zillow Rentals, Zillow Closing Services, Zillow Homes, Inc., Trulia, Out East, StreetEasy, and HotPads.
The Zillow app is available in the App Store with a 4.8 out of 5 overall rating, and in Google Play with a 4.4 overall rating. Reviewers of the app for iOS and Android praise the tool’s user-friendliness.
The app works on a database of more than 135 million U.S. homes, including homes for sale, for rent, and those not currently on the market. The agent finder tool can help start the real estate agent search. You can search by location, home price, size, and other features.
The app regularly updates its database. Some minor changes made by sellers appear within a few minutes on the app, but all changes are updated within 24 hours.
Zillow is free for buyers and sellers.
BEST FOR BUYING AT AUCTION
Xome Real Estate Auctions
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We chose Xome as our best app for buying a home at auction because of its easy user experience to view and bid on nationwide listings. Detailed information like financing, property, and neighborhood statistics; alerts when someone else bids on a property you are watching; and property price history all keep the bidder up-to-date on activity. Xome Real Estate Auctions further surpasses its competitors with an efficient e-signing capability for contracts.
Pros
One of the largest databases of auction properties
View pre-auction properties
The app has the same full suite of features available on the website
Push notifications alert you when a competitive bid happens
Contract e-signing within the app
Cons
While the auction inventory is large, the app has relatively few reviews on both the Apple Store and the Google Play Store
Xome Real Estate Auctions is a nationwide app based in Texas, with offices in California. In addition, Xome has a variety of subsidiary companies and divisions that provide title services, mortgage solutions, field services, valuations, notary signings, and more.
Xome Real Estate Auctions has one of the largest nationwide selections of REO, short sale, foreclosure, and luxury properties for auction. The app allows a nationwide search of homes for sale with an easy user experience, making it our top choice for buying a home at auction.
The Xome Real Estate Auctions app is available through both the App Store and Google Play. On Google Play, it has an overall rating of 4 stars, while the App Store rates it with an overall rating of 5 stars. The app provides a user-friendly interface and is free.
Though it is free to register for an auction, interested buyers must agree to a $1,000 hold for every event they sign up for. If a buyer wins a property, Xome will add a “Buyer’s Premium” on top of the winning bid, which is either 5% of the winning bid value or $2,500, whichever is greater. This will become the new purchase price for the property, not including closing costs.
The Buyer’s Premium is split as a commission between the seller’s Xome Agent, the buyer’s realtor, and Xome. This is different from the commission structure of a standard property sale, wherein sellers are usually responsible for paying all realtor fees.
After placing an order and receiving a confirmation email, a Xome Agent will call within one business day to coordinate the completion.
BEST SEARCHABILITY
Trulia
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We chose Trulia as our best home buying app in terms of searchability because it lets the user view a property in several ways. For instance, an individual can view the property itself, area crime information, shopping, eating establishments, schools, commute times, and reviews from community members.
Pros
Trulia app displays local info such as neighborhoods, schools, and shopping
The app notifications alert you to new homes added to the market that fit your criteria
The platform provides pre-qualified financing and calculators
You can draw with your finger on the map to customize your geographic search
There is a link to the listing agent in each property listing for direct contact
Cons
Complicated process to list “for-sale-by-owner” properties
Users have complained about receiving notifications unrelated to their search
The company was founded in 2005, was acquired by Zillow Group in 2015, and is headquartered in San Francisco. The app is best for searchability because users can examine millions of listings nationwide using 34 neighborhood map overlays. These overlays provide users more insight into what it’s like to live not only in that home but also in that neighborhood.
Google Play rated Trulia at 4.6 out of 5 stars with nearly 210,000 reviews. On the App Store, Trulia has earned 4.8 stars with 1.1 million reviews.
Since being acquired by Zillow in 2015, Trulia has access to most of Zillow’s database of 135 million homes. To ensure consumers are viewing the best and most up-to-date information possible, Trulia processes more than 1.5 terabytes of data every single day, giving it the required data for buyers to search better than on other apps. The data falls into two core data sets: listings and public records data, and consumer behavior data. Like other home buying apps, Trulia gives home facts from public records.
Within just a few minutes of engagement on the app, users generate an average of 18 to 20 events, or signals, about their intent or preferences. Trulia processes these signals to serve custom content and drive engagement.
Trulia shows names and contact information for listing agents, so users know who they would be working with for each listing. The app is free for users.
BEST REALTOR OPTIONS
Homesnap
HomesnapSIGN UP NOW
We chose Homesnap as the home buying app with the best realtor options because realtors, teams, and brokers can view production metrics, agent rankings, and reports.
Pros
Access to highly credible listings due to MLS integration
Extensive filtering, helpful map overlays, and other options to find the perfect home
High definition photos
Cons
Lack of coverage in some areas, as Homesnap must partner with individual MLSs
Homesnap is a trusted home buying platform for people to explore homes, search listings, and collaborate right from their phone. The company is was bought by commercial real estate information provider Costar in late 2020.
Homesnap provides the best options for realtors because users can start accessing data-backed prospecting tools, unparalleled client collaboration features, and a direct connection to your Multiple Listing Service (MLS) real-time data in one place.
Homesnap is a free app available for Android and iOS. Homesnap has earned 4.8 stars overall in the App Store with over 70,000 reviews and 4.5 stars overall rating in Google Play with over 7,000 reviews.
This app is powered by a specialized homes database by integrating real-time data from over 240 MLSs, as well as property tax records, census data, geographic boundaries, property polygons, school information, mortgage rates, and other real estate-related information.
The app claims a real-time MLS update, which gives users access to new and updated listings before other apps do.
With the find-an-agent feature, users can connect with their agent or with the agent who knows the most about the home they’re interested in. Realtors use a similar version of the app with more enhanced features so they can message with their clients on the app and help them find the perfect home. The optional Homesnap Pro is designed to make it easier for real estate agents to work on the go by getting real-time, agent-only MLS data into their hands for free, as long as the agent is an active subscriber of a participating MLS.
MOST RELIABLE
Realtor.com
best app for buying a house
Real Estate by Trulia is one of the most downloaded and consistently highly rated apps in the home buying industry. Using a built-in instant search GPS feature that can find local houses on the fly, Trulia adds components like “Local Info” that display interactive maps with crime statistics and schools in a specific area. And of course, the app has more sortable criteria than you can imagine and millions of home listing nationwide.
Zillow Real Estate joins Trulia as the 2 leaders in home buying apps in terms of downloads and ratings. Zillow puts 100 million searchable properties at your fingertips and even allows you to set notifications for your favorite properties. The app also estimates prices in certain locations of your choice based on market trends in the area.
Realtor.com’s Real Estate app is known as being the favorite of real estate agents because it tends to have the most up-to-date information, sourcing more than 800 MLSs nationwide. The majority of listings update every 15 minutes, and the app will let you search accurate price estimates with the “Area Scout” feature.
Redfin Real Estate has a smaller scope than other comprehensive apps but is well-known for covering urban and metropolitan areas. One of the unique features of Redfin are exclusive “Agent Insights” notes on individual properties, and the app developers boast that you’ll find 20% more homes for sale on this app than the competition.
Tools for homebuyers
Of course prospective homebuyers need to find homes for sale, but what about after you’ve found them?
Whether you need to take notes or find out more information on a property, the following apps are fantastic tools that every home hunter needs to add to their Smartphone.
HomeSnap is one of the more unique and must-have apps available to home shoppers. If you’re checking out a property and want to know more, just take a photo of the home and upload it to the app. If available, the HomeSnap will display interior photos, historic selling prices, and sale history from local MLS listings.
AroundMe fulfills the first rule of real estate: location, location, location. This app uses GPS to find your exact location and then shows restaurants, shops, and other businesses to give you a feel for the surrounding neighborhood. One neat feature is an instant showing of the nearest bank, bar, gas station, hospital, hotel, movie theater, restaurant, supermarket, theater, and taxi service for a certain address.
Trulia Mortgage Calculator delivers exactly what it promises in a simple, easy-to-use design. This app can help prospective buyers determine their spending limits by calculating your monthly mortgage payment. You can also see side-by-side specialized loan quotes from different lenders, compare lender ratings and reviews, and even be put directly in touch with agents. A refinancing calculator, payment trends, and an affordability calculator are all included.
Conclusion
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