Entrepreneurship

Location based Apartment hunting

By Johnny Fuery ⋅ February 22, 2007 ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Sprint uses GPS for apartment hunting app

“Sprint announced an agreement with location-based services provider Smarter Agent to launch “Apts for Rent,” a GPS-enabled navigation and location service that delivers housing data to subscribers without entry of address or zip code information. Apartments for Rent offers Sprint subscribers information including rental prices, unit and building amenities and pet policies; some listings also feature interior photos and floor plans. Property information is provided by Internet listing service Apartments.com.”

I’m not sure who wins more — Apartments for Rent, which charges landlord for listings, or Sprint. Sprint gets to push more GPS-enabled phones, which can’t hurt, and gets some positive PR by being seemingly cutting-edge, but Apartments for Rent gets a captive audience — an audience that doesn’t get a true cross section of apartments and homes for rent, because the listings are paid for.

I’d wager that a craigslist housing search on any area in the country yields better listings.

I guess the real question is if any money changed hands here, and if so, which side got paid.