Mobile Maps Make Apartment-Hunting Easier

CNN reporter Amy Gahran writes: “Hunting for apartments can be exhausting and confusing, but you can make it a bit easier with the help of Google Maps on your smartphone.” Grahan is currently in the process of looking for a new apartment. One problem she encountered recently was that several of the communities she is interested in were holding open houses during the same three-hour window on the same evening. “These places are in the same part of town,” she remarked, “but hitting them all in the allotted time frame could require a lot of running around and navigating.” What she did to remedy the situation was take a few minutes to build a custom “my map” in Google Maps on her laptop. She mapped out the route — complete with addresses, listed rent, apartment type and a link to the online rental listing — and put the listings in the order she planned to visit them. She was able to view this custom map as a layer in the Google Maps app on her Android phone. Prior the big evening, she noted, “It’ll tell me where I need to go next, by what time and how to get there. If I have trouble finding a building, I can pop into street view to check what my destination building looks like. And if I want a quick refresher on the rent, deposit, and other details before viewing a rental, I can jump right into the Craigslist listing for that property.” | Read More