Finding a home is now just a click away

Gone are the days when people solely depended on ‘TO LET’ boards, property consultants or classified ads in a popular daily to find a home on rent or lease. With technological advancement, finding a house of one’s choice has now become less cumbersome.

Internet provides the best and reliable option to find rental homes and there has been several region-specific websites have cropped up which provide accurate choice in terms of accommodation, budget, area and other amenities.

The choice has become so narrow that people are now putting up various demands before finanlising a home. “Our clients even ask for the details about next door neighbours, their economic status, number of car parking and facilities available in the apartments for children etc, which will make the search more difficult for us,” says Mani Priyan, CMD, Vasavi Consultants in Chennai.

He agrees that online sites do provide much more options for people to zero-in on their rental needs or owners to find suitable tenants.

For students or working professionals who are looking for flats in major cities across India, online search option is a boon as they can fix up homes by sitting at their work places itself.

In an ideal renting site, one can find the exact location of the property with available facilities such as transport, schools, hospitals, infrastructure such as banks, shops etc and price listing of each property.

Some sites even provide verified listing of the property or videos of house/flat to cater to the need of tenants. 

“Listings of property with good images or videos get good number of views and bookings. It is indeed a great idea when a house owner offers a virtual tour of his apartment or house on lease or rent,” Vibha Sridhar, Chief Executive Officer of EasyRenting says.

To make the search more enjoyable and less time consuming, her site has recently launched verified listing property facility in Delhi, Noida, Bangalore and planning to launch similar facilities across India in the coming months.

To stay in the competition, some rental sites even send their team to clients’ place to get the picture or video of the property to show in the listing, apart from the accommodation details, the surrounding areas, approach roads, neighbourhood, next door neighbour/s, sanitation and children’s play area.

Such minute details will reduce the number of visits to the property sites by home seekers and make the search more specific.

“We have seen a rental ad about a property in Iyyappanthangal in a famous rental site. The advertiser gave a photo of the building but did not give details like proximity from the main road etc. When we reached the property, though we liked the flat, the infrastructure is awful and the property is 3 km from the main road with no transport facility to the main road. The approach road is also not laid properly. We went to three other properties, and found nothing was in our favour. We lost precious time and energy in finding a right home for us,” says Geeta Vasudevan, who works for TCS and looking for a 2 BHK in Porur area.

“Tenants always look for comfort, security and convenience when they hunt for an apartment. Our team goes to the location, takes videos of the property and then uploads the same on our site. This helps prospective tenants to get a clear picture of the property,” Vibha adds.

When a potential client virtually sees and gets a feel of the property, it becomes easy for him to take a decision faster, and more so, accurately. So, house owners who intend to let out their property for rent in major cities will have an edge over others, when their listings have clear videos. Such facility benefits property owners as well as seekers.