Christopher BeckCharlotte Technology ExaminerJanuary 24, 2014

Moving can be stressful, no matter how big or small the move may be. Finding the right house, getting to know the neighborhood and fashioning your dream home can be made easy with a handful of mobile apps, designed to give you peace of mind on moving day.

1. Find Your Home
Zillow has one of the most trusted mobile apps for finding a new home or apartment across the country, with over 110 million listings. Zillow allows you to filter by price range, bedrooms and bathrooms, while also including photos and full house descriptions, detailing the features of each house. The drawing feature allows users to circle a specific area where they are interested in living to find listings. You can also bookmark favorite listings, and make personal notes for your reference.
Realtor.com also allows you to add notes to listings and use a drawing feature with their mobile app. With Realtor.com, there are over 3 million listings to choose from with information about property tax and sales history. The app also includes a GPS function to direct you to homes for sale near your current location, so you never miss out on an opportunity to find the perfect home. The Realtor app is a great option for families with children, because it allows users to specifically search by school or school district.

2. Find Your Favorite Places
The AroundMe app is a great resource for individuals, couples and families who are new to an area. Whether you are visiting a town and looking for real estate, or just want to get to know the neighborhood, AroundMe provides information and reviews on everything from restaurants to gas stations, bars to banks. The interactive interface allows for you to see how far away you are from popular spots in real time while walking around town, or use the GPS driving directions while in the car.
Walking Score is a mobile app that not only provides information about local and nearby rentals, but also “scores” neighborhoods for walking, biking and transit. These scores take into account the proximity of restaurants, stores and schools to calculate the “walkability” of your neighborhood. Extremely comprehensible, Walking Score searches multiple rental sites, has custom search functions and includes reviews of nearby places.

3. Get The Perfect Home Inspection
The Spectacular Home Inspection System app is used by actual home inspectors to create home inspection reports on-site, which makes it one of the most thorough apps for making sure your home is in tip-top shape. This app is very user friendly, and makes at-home inspections easy with a database of over 6,000 commonly used comments by home inspectors, so you use the same language as a professional home inspector. Spectacular allows the user to create a report, e-mail it or print at home, all while making sure you don’t miss a single detail.

4. Do It Yourself
If you are buying a home as a fixer-upper, or just want to make improvements on your own, there are several apps that can help you do it yourself.
The mobile app from Home Depot includes multiple DIY features to help prepare and empower you to make the right decisions for you home. One such feature is the Augmented Reality component, which allows the user to point a mobile phone in-home and plug in products from the Home Depot--such as doors, kitchen facets, and porch furniture--to see what your home will look like after the change. The Home Depot app gives you access to their catalogue of products while also providing plenty of DIY How-To videos and ideas for homeowners.
The DIY Tip Genius app from The Family Handyman Magazine contains thousands of DIY tips for almost every home improvement project, and tips for how to make your home more efficient and easier to clean. DIY Tip Genius is a useful resource for any handyman who is looking for ways to save money while making improvements on a home.

5. Get Inspired
Once you are in your house, it is time to decorate and make your house a home. Just because you are not a professional interior decorator, doesn’t mean you don’t have taste, and apps like Houzz and ColorSmart can help inspire you.
Houzz boasts, “the largest database of home photos and ideas in the world” with over 2 million photos to browse by room and design, and daily articles filled with ideas about home décor and home improvement to help you customize every room in the house.
ColorSmart is a mobile app by BEHR that allows users to browse the entire spectrum of BEHR paints. What makes this app exceptional is not only the option that lets you preview each color and style, but also the implementation of photo-match. With photo-match, you can take a picture with your phone and the app will match the colors to the BEHR catalogue, and provide the color code.
Whether you are moving across town or across the country, these are great options for moving. Moving is a hassle no matter what you're doing, whether it's dealing with a moving truck or storage pod, moving simply sucks, but these apps can certainly make moving easier.