Homes And Rentals

Review by eFreeware

Homes And Rentals is the mobile version of HAR.com, published by the Houston Association of REALTORS®. It is a property search app, not a general real estate marketplace: the listings it draws on cover homes for sale and for lease across Texas, and the same app also carries a password-protected area for MLS subscribers. It is free, which is unusual for a search tool of this size and is the first thing that makes it easy to recommend trying.

The main reason to consider it is the breadth of the catalog. The developer puts the figure at more than 8 million Texas properties, including homes that are not currently listed for sale, so a search here can turn up a property that a listings-only app would miss. For anyone whose house hunt is confined to Texas, that scope plus the association's own data feed is a meaningful advantage over generic search apps that rely on syndicated listings.

Drive Time search and what it solves

The feature the developer leads with is Drive Time search, which finds homes for sale or rent within a set commute time rather than a radius. That distinction matters if you are moving to a city you do not know well: a circle drawn on a map treats twenty minutes of highway and twenty minutes of stop-and-go traffic as the same thing, while a commute-time search does not.

I would expect this to be the most useful entry point for someone relocating for work, or for a household trying to split the difference between two workplaces. It also pairs naturally with the mapping layer, which includes Street View, so you can look at a block before deciding whether a listing deserves a visit. The rest of the filtering is conventional in a good way: proximity, price, square footage and similar criteria narrow the results, and you can save a set of criteria to reuse later.

Listing detail, photos and alerts

Each listing carries a fairly deep set of details: price, room dimensions, interior and exterior features, and the open house schedule. That is the level of information you normally have to piece together from several sources, and having it in one place is what makes the app practical for shortlisting rather than just browsing.

Photo galleries run to as many as 50 images per listing, which the developer pitches as more than you may find on other apps. Whether or not that comparison holds everywhere, a long gallery is genuinely useful for judging a property's condition before you spend an afternoon driving to see it. Bookmarking and sharing cover the social side: you can save favorites and pass them to family or friends who are part of the decision.

Saved searches are the other half of that workflow. Once your criteria are stored, the app notifies you when matching homes are posted on HAR.com, which turns the search from something you have to remember to check into something that comes to you. For a market where desirable listings can move quickly, that is the feature most likely to earn the app a permanent spot on your home screen.

Reaching an agent, and the agent-side tools

The app includes a live chat feature for connecting with an agent about a specific property, and a Nearby Agents tool that surfaces agents with listings near your location or who have recently had showings in the area. Both are aimed at shortening the gap between finding a property and talking to someone who can act on it, which is often the slowest part of the process.

Subscribers to HAR MLS get a layer of their own, entered with their HAR login. There, members can track leads, their own listings and their company's inventory. The member listing view adds days on market, price-change history, showing instructions where applicable, a tax profile report and tax values and rates.

The Instant CMA feature is the one member tool worth calling out on its own: it lets agents assemble a comparative market analysis report, which the developer describes as faster and more accurate than the previous process. If you are an agent already working inside HAR, the app is essentially a mobile extension of your desk tools rather than a consumer product with a few extras bolted on.

What the app asks of you

There is no cost to download or use the consumer side. What the app does require is a Texas focus: the search covers properties in Texas, so its value scales directly with how relevant that market is to you. If your search is elsewhere, the catalog simply will not have what you need.

The Premium Content layer works differently. It opens only by invitation from a REALTOR® holding an MLS Platinum subscription, so you cannot enable it yourself inside the app. That is a relationship-based gate rather than a paywall, and it is worth understanding before you go looking for a setting that turns it on.

The member area has its own requirement: a valid HAR username and password. Agents and brokers outside that MLS will not have credentials and so will not reach the leads, listings or CMA tools. In other words, the app serves two audiences with two different doors, and which door you use depends on whether you are buying or renting on one side, or licensed and subscribed on the other.

Getting useful results from it

The sensible way to approach a search here is to start broad and let the saved-search system do the watching. Set your criteria once, save them, and let the notifications tell you when something matching appears on HAR.com; that is a better use of the app than refreshing a list manually every day. Bookmarking the listings that survive a first pass keeps the shortlist manageable when the alerts start arriving.

Drive Time is worth trying even if you already know the neighborhoods you like, because it can surface areas you had not considered that sit inside your actual commute. Photo galleries and Street View let you screen properties hard before booking visits, and the room dimensions and features listed for each home will rule some out quickly. When a property does interest you, the live chat and Nearby Agents features give you a direct route to someone who can answer questions about it.

The developer notes that recent work has gone into fixing crashes, addressing reported issues and improving speed, which suggests the app is being actively maintained rather than left to sit. That matters for a tool you might rely on during a time-sensitive search. A 4.8 average across more than 8,400 ratings, with over 500,000 installs, is the kind of signal that usually reflects a mature, settled app rather than a new one still finding its feet.

A Texas search tool worth keeping installed

Homes And Rentals does one job and does it within clear borders: it searches Texas property, for buyers, renters and the agents who serve them. The combination of a deep catalog, commute-based search, long photo galleries and saved-search alerts covers the whole arc of a hunt, from first browse to booked viewing. The trade-offs are structural rather than annoying: the app is tied to one state, Premium Content depends on an agent's invitation, and the member tools need HAR credentials.

I would suggest it to anyone searching for a home or rental in Texas, and to HAR members who want their leads, listings and CMA work on their phone. If your search is outside Texas, or you are an agent working in a different MLS, the app's scope will not stretch to cover you.

What's new in version 4.3.1

Our teams have solved many crashes, fixed issues you've reported and made the app faster