Realtor.com unveiled a rental app today that enables users to search for rental properties on iOS and Android smartphones.
The app aims to bring realtor.com, which is operated by Move Inc., up to speed with competitors Trulia and Zillow. Zillow launched a rental app for Android in April 2012, and a version for iPhone later that year in September. Trulia released an Android rental app in 2011, and added an iPhone version in April 2012.
The app features an image-focused interface, allowing users to scroll through listing photos from a search feed. And it allows apartment, condo and house hunters to filter by specifications like parking, in-unit laundry and pet policies. It also allows people to filter by listings they have viewed and contacted, as well as receive alerts when properties that meet their search criteria hit the market.
“This increased demand for rentals listings, paired with the demonstrated success of realtor.com in the mobile space, made launching the realtor.com rentals application a natural next step,” said Scott Boecker, chief product officer at Move. “Realtor.com is focused on helping people love where they live — whether you’re buying, selling or renting a home. The launch of our new rentals app for iOS and Android takes this commitment to the next level, conveniently delivering our rentals experience to users on their hand-held devices.”
Realtor.com said the listings are updated every 15 minutes and are vetted by a data-quality team.
Poor quality control on rental sites, particularly Craigslist, has been a sore spot with agents for years. Recently, an unusually sophisticated scam that used Zillow rattled the National Association of Realtors, though many agents who commented on an Inman story that reported the scam said that they had seen similar scams before.
