Not Sure Where To House Hunt?

One person's dream house is another's nightmare. While some people would thrive in a community filled with college-age tech-heads, others fit in better in retirement-oriented communities that have a lot to offer older Americans. Generally, seekers have had to use a patchwork of online tools ranging from data aggregators to forums and reviews.

The Census Department is working to share more of its non-identifying data. One of its first moves in this arena is Dwellr, a new app that can help identify cities, towns and even neighborhoods that suit your needs and preferences.

Dwellr is a free app for both Android and iPhone. To use Dwellr, you start by answering a set of 11 questions. The app will ask about your gender, your ideal sized town, the region of the country you'd like and other factors such as relationship and occupation. Based on your answers, the app will bring back a list of 25 places that fit your requirements. Then, you can look at each place in more depth to learn more.

The app can help you find places based on employment opportunities, how people in the neighborhood typically commute to work and even factors like how many single or married people there are in an area. The app also has a GPS feature, so, you can turn it on while you are house hunting to get more information about the neighborhoods you are looking at.

Dwellr is, of course, far from the only app that can help you find a new home. A few others that are helping home seekers:

Real Estate by Zillow. This app gives the same information that is available on the site, and also uses your phone's GPS to notify you of nearby homes for sale.Yelp. Love a house, but want to know what it'd be like living in that area? Turn on Yelp to find out about local restaurants, shopping, parks and other amenities.realtor.com real estate. Get information about not just the homes themselves, credit scores required for loan roducts and also which school district the house falls in and how the local schools are rated.Glossary Real Estate Terms. Confused by all of the jargon in real estate listings, contracts or other paperwork? Pull out this app to quickly get concise definitions.Real Estate Answers. Have questions, but not quite ready to talk directly to a realtor? This app allows you to anonymously ask everything from the value of a home to how the real estate market is doing in any particular area. When you are house hunting, it helps to use all of the resources available. Take advantage of the many free research tools on your smart phone to make the best choices for you and your family.

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