Since we are all stuck at home or elsewhere currently, it is a good time to focus on some digital solutions to solve problems. LYV is one of them that addresses the housing market. Traditionally, apartment searching is very different in Jordan from how it is done in my home country for example. The fact that addresses don’t have the same importance and also digital solutions have not yet been widely developed, and/or accepted, left Jordan with a variety of scattered ways to go about house hunting.
While at home most people will turn to one website and maybe the newspaper for this purpose, in Jordan people might look at signs hanging outside of buildings, checking Facebook groups, opensouq.com, newspapers, real estate agencies, and the good and old word of mouth might do their part. The Lyv app, however, provides a totally new approach with notifications and 360-degree views in some cases. For more on renting apartments and utilities you have to pay in Jordan, you might want to look at my article on Renting a Place & Utilities in Jordan.
You can sign up easily using Facebook or create an account using your email address. Then you are ready to search for apartments online. Mainly the search is centered around a map. So you can see listings near you or in areas you define. You can further amend your search by many filters. Apart from the obvious such as type, room numbers, price, you can filter by age, availability, properties, or interior and exterior features such as quality of furniture or availability of fiber internet. You can even search for the availability of solar panels or LED lights. So, you have plenty of options, maybe even a bit too much.
After defining your search filters, you can see all the listings on a map, indicated as a small circle with a price (yearly rental price), or also browse the results in a gallery, which you can sort according to the distance to you, price and area. This is all really helpful and facilitates an easy search. There are more than 1200 listings for rent and more than 1400 listings to buy, so quite a selection to choose from. If you click on a listing, you have plenty of options for contacting the owner or the Lyv app through WhatsApp and you can provide feedback, share the listing, report fraud, and add the listing to your favorites. Another great option is that you can get notifications from listings nearby, which match your search criteria. Once the curfew is over, just hit that hunt button.
Unfortunately, I was not able to go into a detailed test, as a) I am not really looking for an apartment and b) we can’t look beyond the digital aspect, as we are not allowed to leave the home at the moment. Also, I did not go much into the details of creating a listing yourself. However, that seems to be pretty simple and you can access it quickly through the Add button.
All in all, the app (I checked Android version) makes a good impression, sign up was easy, it did not crash and it works fast. And the best thing it is free for both advertisers and people searching. See below a quick video introducing Lyv. It is in Arabic but includes English subtitles.
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If you liked this article, make sure to also see the other reviews of The most useful apps in Jordan
