How to choose a dream apartment using non-obvious services

Obviously, when buying an apartment, it is important to check its legal purity. Lifehacker has a big instruction, how to do it. But you need to deal with documents when you already have specific one or two options in mind.

But before this stage, you have to watch hundreds of ads, go around dozens of apartments. The process can be simplified a bit and determine that a particular housing is not suitable for you, using a computer or smartphone.

Find out if the apartment will be sunny

What will be useful:

• Hinode.pics →
• SunCalc →
• SunDirection →
• Sun Surveyor →

People want different things from an apartment. Some people like it to be sunny in the house all day. And someone suffers in a room where the rays penetrate, because he cannot bear the heat. And it's nice to get a home that matches your desires.

Everything seems to be elementary: the sun rises in the east, sets in the west. This means that if the windows face north, you won’t get light, if the windows face south, the rays will penetrate into the apartment almost constantly.

But there are other ambiguous cases. For example, if the apartment is oriented to the northeast, will there be sun or not, and for how long? In addition, the luminary describes an unequal path through the sky in winter and summer, and much depends on geographic latitude. As a result, I want to somehow additionally check what to expect.

There are services that reflect how the sun's rays fall during the day on a selected point on the map. Moreover, you can take different dates and see how the situation changes depending on the season.

Services work as follows. Let's take a house on Marata street in Petersburg, oriented with windows to the northwest. It looks as if the rays of the setting sun should penetrate into the apartment. However, if we check the building with one of the services, it turns out that in January the sunset rays will barely glide along the window slopes. But in August the situation is different, a little sun should still get into the apartment. (It describes the path from the right red line to the left through the bottom of the map.)

Unless, of course, a tall building interferes with this. And this is a nuance that is worth remembering: free applications usually show the movement of the sun on a flat map and nothing more. However, you can assess whether there are barriers to sunlight by walking past the selected object. Including virtual, but more on that below. If you still want to use services for this purpose, try the paid Sun Surveyor application. It will already show not only the trajectory of the star, but also its height, and the patency of the rays, taking into account the relief.

Check out what's around

The best way to appreciate the area is to walk. But this takes time. Although you can learn a lot without leaving your home.

With the help of cards

What will be useful:

• 2GIS →
• "Yandex. Maps» →

Obviously, when choosing an apartment, you look at its location on the map. But it is worth paying attention not only to where it is, but also to the buildings that surround it.

Usually residential buildings differ in color from non-residential ones. For example, in the 2GIS screenshots below, houses are painted white, administrative buildings are light gray, and production buildings are dark gray. And it is easy to see that there are not many houses in this area. Accordingly, the infrastructure will be mainly focused on people who will work and go home in the evening. And the streets will be empty in the evening, which is unsafe. Dark gray also marks buildings under construction and renovation, which can take years to complete. And that means noise, building dust and other similar delights.

At Yandex, the buildings are also painted, although the difference between the colors is not so striking.

At the same time, you can find out which specific shops, schools, kindergartens, stops are nearby.

With the help of panoramas

What will be useful:

• Panorama on Yandex. Maps» →
• Panorama on Google maps →

Look for the one with fresh footage. To go directly to the panorama, select the desired section of the map, click on the icon of a man with an arrow on the top right in Yandex. Maps" or on yellow in the lower right in the Google service.

The panorama helps not only to see what buildings are around and in what condition, but also to discover interesting things. For example, not so long ago, an apartment was for sale in the house from the picture - a very good one. However, the panorama gives reason to be wary. Individual windows are very unkempt and the frames are clogged rubbish - hardly anyone wants to have such an apartment in the neighborhood.

Of course, it is worth considering that the panoramas are not updated so often. Yandex did the last shooting in St. Petersburg in 2019. It may well turn out that suspicious residents have moved, abandoned houses nearby have been repaired, construction has been completed, and so on. But the house from the illustration looked the same in 2021. With the help of panoramas, at least you can make yourself a checklist of what you need to double-check if you still decide to see a particular apartment.

Find out how much tax you have to pay for an apartment

What will be useful:

• Tax calculator from the Federal Tax Service →

Service for calculating the possible property tax is on the website of the tax office itself. To use it, you need to know the cadastral address of the apartment. You can find it by the physical address on site Rosreestr.

The difficulty is that the ads almost never write the apartment number. But it can often be calculated using the plan of the apartment, information about the floor and the entrance number. Even if it doesn’t come out the first time, you can always check whether the footage in the information about the apartment that Rosreestr will give you matches the data in the ad. And try again if not.

When you determine the cadastral address, you can use the tax service itself. Select the year for which you want to calculate the tax, enter the cadastral number. Next, you need to set the time of ownership of the apartment. Choose dates so that the fake ownership period starts earlier than the year you are calculating the tax for and ends later. Set the default deduction and tax rate and get the result.

Keep in mind: the service is not very stable. Sometimes he thinks everything is correct, sometimes he gives out figures that are about two times higher than what the tax actually calculates. It is impossible to predict the correctness at a particular moment. But at least you will receive an approximate amount, more than which they are unlikely to take from you. Significantly less is possible.

Learn about the history of the house

What will be useful:

• Wikimapia →
• Local lore sites of your city.

If you are buying an apartment not in a new building, but in an existing housing stock, it is interesting to find out what happened to the house before. And not only information about him is important, but also comments. For example (true story!), in the messages you can find people who moved into your apartment after the war and moved out in the late 70s.

Deal with the management company

What will be useful:

• "Housing and communal services reform" →

It depends on the management company how often they will remove snow from your entrance, change light bulbs, repair leaks in the basement and many other aspects of a civilized existence. This is something worth finding out in advance.

On the Housing and Public Utilities Reform website, in addition to technical information about the house, you can find out which UK the house is assigned to and see its rating. And with the name of the company, it will already turn out to read reviews on the Internet.

Find out what the general atmosphere of the area is like

What will be useful:

• Instagram

This step is for those who are ready to dive into the abyss selfieto find rare pearls at the very bottom. On Instagram, you can search for photos that have been tagged with a street or a specific house. If you are lucky, you will be able to find out something interesting about your neighbors, and even about the apartment that you are considering buying.

Maybe you know some other life hacks? Share in the comments.