Daily App: Lovely helps you find a killer apartment and pay for it, too
Looking for a new apartment and an easy way to pay for it? Then you should look at iPhone app Lovely, which was recently overhauled for iOS 7. Lovely launched its iOS app in 2012 and has steadily improved its mobile platform, adding keyword search and a renter card to make it easy to find and secure a new place to live.
Lovely pulls in real estate data from a variety of sources, providing a robust list of rental options to the apartment hunter. Though it didn't provide any listings for my very rural area, the app had over a hundred listings for Portland, Maine, which is the closest city to me.
Lovely displays the listing for your area using a map and a zoomed-out view that shows the number of rentals in a particular neighborhood using a blue dot. Tapping on the blue icon will zoom you into that cluster of listings and allow you to view them individually. Each listing is represented by a different color allowing you to tell in a glance whether this is a new listing, an old listing or one that you have viewed or favorited.
Each individual listing is chock full of details, including images of the property, the price, location, aunties and a description. A map allows you to get directions to the property and handy buttons for email and phone allows your to contact the landlord in just a few taps. You also can sign up for a Lovely account and "Favorite" a listing to save it for later.
Other useful features in the app include alerts that notify you when a new apartment meeting your criteria hits the market and a renters card that contains all your pertinent renter information, like income, credit score and contact info. This renter card is an easy way for you to send your information to a prospective landlord so you can get first dibs on a new listing.
The latest version of the app adds a new "Pay Rent" feature that lets you setup automatic payments for your monthly rent. To enable payments, you must sign up for the service with your payment account information and then contact your landlord so they can enter their deposit account information. Once both accounts are added to the service, the payments will be sent on time every month with no effort on your part.
Lovely is available for iOS for free. It is compatible with the iPhone and requires iOS 7. There are no ads or in-app purchases.
