Searching for an Apartment, Put on your Slippers.
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
How consumers search for a place to live is changing rapidly.
As is the level of satisfaction they receive from it. According to a new survey completed recently with Minneapolis-St.Paul metro area apartment renters, 90% of apartment hunters start their search by visiting a rental search website, like Minneapolis based RENT411.com, and 62% of them also consult a rental magazine.
Old favorites such as driving around, asking for recommendations from friends and family, or even taking a look at the newspaper have become much less popular. They prove time-consuming, slow or unreliable.
When asked how useful the different methods of finding an apartment in Minneapolis-St.Paul were, renters thought:
- rental search websites were useful more than 80% of the time,
- while driving around or the newspaper listings fell short of their expectations with less than 20% useful rating.
Among rental search websites that were highly rated, RENT411.com, Rent.com and Craigslist.com were top three for Twin Cities Metro renters.