The vast majority of apartment or house hunting activities, be it the research, enquiry or even the sale, now take place online – trust us, we’re sort of experts in the field. The days of ink-staining your fingertips as your flick through apartment listings in the newspaper are so distant it already seems romantic.
And yet, the digital real estate market is still young and fresh with innovative new features and indeed new platforms. All of these aim to create a more seamless experience for those looking to rent out their apartment and those in search of a new one.
One such platform that is gaining popularity in the real estate scene is Facebook, with its dedicated space for advertising, selling and buying, Facebook Marketplace. While it was initially used to sell things that you might put in your apartment – a second-hand sofa or hand-me-down hallway lamp perhaps – Facebook Marketplace is now well accustomed to hosting adverts for fully fledged apartments – renting them, at least.
The property listings include custom filters for criteria such as location, price, number of bedrooms, square footage, and the all-important dog/cat friendly factor. To give users a good idea of what they’re looking at, the listings can even include 360° photos. It’s pretty comprehensive.
And although the concept of finding or renting out your next home on social media seems distinctly hip, almost uncomfortably so, many Australians have jumped on the bandwagon already. This is a list of apartments for rent on Facebook Marketplace in Sydney alone.
So whether you’re looking to rent out your apartment or you need a place to live while your beautiful off the plan apartment is being built, Facebook Marketplace could come in handy. If it’s that beautiful off the plan apartment you’re actually looking for, you needn’t bother with Facebook Marketplace – just click here.
But it’s not just individuals marketing their properties, either. In the States, real estate brands Apartment List and Zumper have teamed up with Facebook resulting in hundreds of thousands of their listings now appearing in the Marketplace.
Once you wrap your head around the idea of using social media to find or rent our your next home, it’s pretty simple. Just like how you can shop fashion directly from Instagram, you can now rent apartments directly from Facebook.
And while we don’t necessarily see Apartment Developments teaming up with Facebook for a Marketplace integration anytime soon to sell off the plan apartments, we think it’s a pretty neat addition to the world of digital real estate.