In some cities (coughsanfranciscocough), apartment hunting is about as much fun as eating glass. The only difference is that eating glass might be less frustrating, since, at the very least, you have a pretty good idea of what the eventual outcome might be.
 
Looking for a place to live, on the other hand, can be an exercise in exasperation, with hours upon agonizing hours spent researching, bookmarking, e-mailing, visiting, applying, and, if you’re lucky, signing.
 
Every now and then a tool comes along that claims to take the hassle out of your apartment search, but every one I’ve tried has left me decidedly underwhelmed.
 
Until now.
 
Lovely, a new tool to help renters find the right home, is slick. Really slick. And functional, too.
 
Upon logging in, the interface presents a map of the city, overlaid with dots indicating the number of available rentals in each neighborhood. Users can easily filter their searches by cost, size and pet-friendliness.
 
The app also eases a big traditional hurdle in the process: applying for an apartment. By allowing users to create a “Renter Resume” with background info and rental history which gets sent to prospective landlords, Lovely helps renters fast-track themselves to scoring an apartment.
 
As of now, the software crawls Craigslist and Trulia for listings, but expects to expand soon to allow landlords to post their listings directly.