Apartments.com Review

There seems to be no shortage of housing options across much of the USA, with millions of homes to buy, apartments to rent, and condos to lease. Prices vary greatly from city to city and even within the same apartment complex, the prices can range widely. One site that I have used when looking for temporary housing is Apartments.com, an on- line site for coast to coast apartment shopping. Let's take a closer look at this web site:

Web Site Commentary:

Apartments.com is a useful web service that helps link together renters and landlords. This web service offers extensive listings of apartments, condominiums, townhouses, and even houses that are listed for rent. It also keeps the renter or owner educated on the do's and don'ts of renting with its educational materials on everything from maintenance to the decision on whether or not to find a roommate.

I have used apartment.com several times in the past, both for myself and for others who were looking for a permanent or temporary place to rent. Based on my experience then and now, apartment.com is a decent place to search for rental properties but while it has improved compared to the past, it still has its share of annoyances. But first, let's talk about the good reasons to use apartment.com. For one thing, it does keep itself updated in a timely manner and it does contain thousands and thousands of properties. Actually, the number of properties included in apartment.com can get a little exhausting particularly in a large metropolitan area. You almost have to narrow down your search, at least a little, to keep the number of matches at a manageable level. Apartments.com is also good at helping tenants select a specific area of a city. After a large urban area has been selected, apartments.com then asks the user to narrow down to a specific region/community of the city. This is intended to pinpoint more precisely where one wishes to live and to narrow down the search results. Selecting more criteria is usually needed to get the list narrowed down sufficiently, but this does help tenants find an exact area to search.

The search function in apartments.com is one area that could use more improvements. It is better than it was in the past but it still has its share of frustrations. It offers many different criteria to select from, but once you have ran the search and get your list of matches, you will notice that it doesn't give any specifics on the main list of matching properties. You have to select the properties, one by one, to see if they have what you want. For example, let's say you select the criteria to narrow down you list to include only those apartments that allow large dogs (I have used this one). The list you get will include only those places that allow dogs, but you won't know any specifics on the limitations for your dog (like weight limits- some apartments only allow dogs up to 50 pounds) or the deposit or special fees for having a dog in your apartment. To find these, you have to click each individual apartment and look for the information. The same is true with other search amenities. If you select multiple amenities, apartments.com will display those that match any number of them- not just those that match everything you asked for. And with each listing, it will display "1 out of 2 amenities matched" or "2 out of 3 matched" or whatever. But there is no indication as to which amenities you selected are matched. You have to click each property, one at a time, and find out for yourself.

One area of apartments.com that is a little newer is the section on apartment living. This is a general advice/educational section and most of it is pretty basic. Also, much of it doesn't apply to just apartment living- it applies to any living arrangement. Examples include advice on exercising, improving your credit score, and shopping for groceries. These areas, and many others like them, are applicable to any type of living quarters. They are nothing unique to living in an apartment.

Bottom Line:

Overall, apartments.com is an average web service for searching and finding the right rental property. I appreciate the large number of listings to choose from but apartments.com really needs to improve its search function before it can claim to be a world class web service. It gives you basically what you need to find an apartment but it would be much smoother to use if a few simple enhancements were made to the search capabilities.