5 Best Apartment Websites for Young Professionals

When you were ten years old, it was a lot of fun to imagine having your own place. Now that reality has set in, you may be feeling more stressed than excited about apartment hunting.

Thankfully, you can use an apartment website or app to find your next home sweet home. Regardless of where you’re moving, you can use these sites to limit your stress and maximize your excitement. 

Here are five of the best apartment websites for young professionals looking to rent. 

#1: Zumper

Zumper is a free apartment website that focuses on finding apartments for young professionals and mobile users. In 2016, they acquired Padmapper, a similar platform that helps college students and young adults find roommates and affordable housing. 

Although the same company owns both of them, each platform is separate to better serve their specific audiences. Both sites include filters and user-friendly interfaces. These help you quickly find an apartment with the right amenities, location, and price range. 

Zumper is the largest privately-backed rental platform in America. It provides support for landlords as well as apartment searchers. The company’s goal is to make finding a new apartment and signing a lease as quick and painless as possible. 

Young adults moving to a new location will find Zumper’s city guides and research on the market especially helpful. The company also runs a blog that offers advice to first-time renters trying to navigate landlords, apartment touring, rent negotiation, and other rental challenges. 

#2: Apartments.com

According to their website, Apartments.com is the #1 site for renters. This company is a giant in the industry and one of the oldest. It was founded 30 years ago in 1992. Costar, the company that owns Apartments.com, also runs ForRent.com, ApartmentFinder.com, and several other rental sites. 

Although the company started in the 90s, Apartments.com has kept up with the times. It offers users innovative features like a drawing tool to define their search area. The website’s research team works to confirm rental information and photograph properties for users. 

The site offers an app for mobile devices, making it easy for users to search for apartments on the go. While they can’t verify that 100% of their listings are valid, the company works hard to verify and update listings to better serve their users. 

For an added bonus, this renters site comes in an English and Spanish version. It also offers filters to easily search by location, price range, type of home, and other factors. There are over a million listings for renters, and landlords can find a range of services on the site, too.  

#3: Craigslist

Although some users may shy away from using Craigslist, it’s an indispensable tool for finding affordable apartments in your area. Many landlords use this site because it’s a free place for them to post listings, so if you’re willing to put in some extra effort, you could be rewarded with a gem. 

Apartments on Craigslist go quickly, so this is also a great option for young professionals who want to move asap. To search the site, you’ll need to select your city and then choose the apt/housing option under the housing category. 

A list of filters on the left will help you narrow your choices. You’ll find a distance tool, price parameters, square footage, and a series of checklist items like smoking-free and pet friendly. By narrowing your search, you can stay updated on what’s available in your area without spending a long time reviewing options. 

To save even more time, consider creating an Applet to update you on new listings within your search criteria. After searching Craigslist once and setting up applet notifications, you’ll be able to go about your day and be automatically notified about new possibilities in your area. 

#4: Trulia

Trulia is an apartment website owned by Zillow, a major player in online real estate. Originally started in 2005, Trulia offers users several unique tools to help them make their next move. For one thing, the site includes crime data to help users determine the safety of their potential new neighborhood. 

This site is particularly useful for first-time renters because it breaks down total monthly costs for each property instead of just listing the mortgage or rent. By using this feature, apartment seekers can anticipate additional living costs like insurance and association fees. 

To help apartment seekers keep track of the rentals they like, Trulia’s site features lists for saved homes and favorite searches. You can also filter your searches by “rent” to ensure that no homes for sale interrupt your apartment search. 

Trulia also offers its users a supportive blog as well as detailed guides on how to buy or rent a property. Young professionals will appreciate the intuitive search interface and abundance of property photos. Detailed filters give users full control over what they’re seeing. 

#5: Lovely 

Although this rental app doesn’t technically have a website, it’s too good of a resource not to include on this list. In 2014, Lovely was sold to RentPath, a company that owns several rental websites, including Apartment Guide and Rent.com. 

The Lovely app aims to streamline the rental process, allowing users to search, apply, and close on new apartments all on one platform. Unlike many other real estate platforms, Lovely only includes rentals, which makes looking for appropriate housing easier for apartment seekers. 

Lovely constantly refreshes its list of newly posted rentals. This can help you make contact with landlords and rental agents quickly so that you don’t miss any new opportunities – a feature that’s particularly useful in large cities where properties go quickly. 

When you set up the app, you’ll create a personal resume that builds trust with landlords and makes it easy to complete the application process after you find the perfect apartment. Lovely also offers tools to landlords and property managers to support them during the rental process. 

Renting Made Easy

Finding an apartment doesn’t have to be exhausting or stressful. There are many things to consider while apartment hunting, but your search can be made easy by using an apartment website. You can significantly reduce the time you spend searching while maintaining confidence that you’re finding good options in your area. 

You can use these five tools independently or in combination to search your chosen location and find an ideal apartment quickly – and with little stress. Take advantage of these free modern resources to streamline your apartment search and get back to the business of apartment living.