Home buying can be an incredibly overwhelming experience. Thankfully there are many great mobile apps out there that are specifically geared towards simplifying the home buying process. From home search tools, to apps that help keep all of your information organized, to apps that provide you with specific neighborhood information, home buyers today have many great options to take their home search completely mobile!
Realtor.ca Mobile App
Probably the Grand Daddy of home search apps, Realtor.ca is a free app offered by the Canadian Real Estate Association. It enables you to search real estate listings across Canada, add open house details to your calender, and search listings in your immediate area using the GPS on your mobile device.
Re/Max Real Estate Mobile Search App
The Re/Max Real Estate Mobile Search App is another free app that enables you to search real estate listings for sale either locally or across Canada. The app allows you to customize your search based on your own home search criteria, view properties using the map search options, zoom and navigate neighborhoods of interest, and save your searches and favorite listings to your tablet for later reference. Once you’ve found a property that really interests you, you can generate detailed driving directions to help you get there. The app also has a handy built in mortgage calculator to help you determine the financing options best for you.
CMHC Ready, Set, Home!
Ready, Set, Home is a free app that was developed by the Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation to help home buyers make informed choices when buying a home. It offers tools to help you decide how much you can comfortably afford to spend, and also helps you keep track of the details involved in your home search. The app includes a handy home features checklist, the ability to input all of the contact information for your professional team (Realtor, Home Inspector, Mortgage Lender etc.), a great mortgage calculator, budget calculator, a glossary of real estate terminology, as well as access to a variety of educational articles related to home buying as well as planning and managing your mortgage.
Walkscore
Once you find that perfect home, you will probably want to check out the neighborhoods ‘walkability’ factor. Walkscore is a fun mobile app that allows you to see neighborhood information such as nearby restaurants and bars, coffee shops, grocery stores, schools, potential problem hot spots, and even transit stops.
Evernote
Evernote is a definite must have for any tech savy home buyer. Consider it to be an easy to use, free app that will allow you to organize every detail of your home search in one place, and have it available on all of your devices so that you always have information with you when you need it most. With Evernote you can keep all the little details, property tour notes, snapshots and even quick voice memos in one place which you can further organize into notebooks or tags. Evernote is a pretty cool tool, and I highly recommend that you try it out.
I hope that you are able to incorporate some of these tools into your home search, be it here in Thunder Bay, or elsewhere. The beauty of these mobile apps is in their ability to provide you with accurate information, right at your fingertips, when you most need it.
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