These are the best apps to help Generation Rent move house

Generation rent is nomadic. We are roving and peripatetic, shuttling between leases every 12 or 18 months, depending on the dictatorship of the break clause. It’s also expensive.

Indeed, the latest estimate, published last week by the Resolution Foundation think-tank, finds that we’re spending three times more of our income on housing than our grandparents did, for what is often worse accommodation.

We also, incidentally, commute for the equivalent of three days more a year than our parents. What a slog.

We could wring our hands — and we do, regularly. But we are also resilient and adaptable: the regularity of our moving means we’ve become rather good at doing it. We know the best way to pack a Zipvan, and we’ve got drawers under the bed stuffed with those colossal blue Ikea totes that we use to heave books from a shonky shelf in one house to a shonkier shelf in another.

Moreover, there has been a revolution: new technology is making it easier than ever to uproot yourself regularly. This is the Gen Rent high-tech kitlist.

Housemate hook-ups

Finding new recruits for your new postcode is now as straightforward as finding a date on Tinder and happily, if you play the algorithm right, it is likely to be more successful. Ideal Flatmate, launched at the beginning of the year, is a flatmate matching service: complete a 20-question survey about your living habits (be honest) and it will suggest a number of candidates.

You can message within the app, and create groups to start hunting for your home.

It’s all about the people, explain founders Tom Gatzen, 29, and Rob Imonikhe, 27. “Our research shows that flatsharers rate the people they live with as the top factor when deciding where to live,” they say.

“Our goal is to create more harmonious households, reduce the number of viewings busy Londoners must go to, and improve the flatsharing experience. We also want to help landlords and lettings agents by reducing ‘tenant churn’ because occupants are expected to stay longer in flats when they get along with their fellow flatmates.”

The site now has 50,000 monthly users in London and the pair have just closed a seed-funding round in which they secured backing from investors with a property background. “Flatsharing is today’s norm for millennials,” they say. “And we believe it can be a positive choice, rather than a purely financial necessity.” (idealflatmate.co.uk)

Otherwise, SpareRoom — the enshrined market leader — has a slick website and app (spareroom.co.uk), while RoomBuddies, an ascendant rival, specifies by categories such as student or gay houseshares (roombuddies.co.uk).

Law and order

Once you’ve found your housemates you need to find a castle. Traditional property websites can be clunky, not to mention deluged with properties that, upon enquiry, you discover are no longer on the market.

Try Urban Collective: it assigns you a property search “sherpa”. Give them your requirements — maximum length of commute, how many bedrooms you need — and they’ll create a shortlist and send it to you and your “tribe” of housemates. They’ll arrange the viewings and hold your hand through the exasperating to-and-fro of deposits and tenancy agreements (theurbancollective.io).

Movebubble has an intelligent property feed: the more you use it, the more it learns what you are looking for. It updates the feed in real time, so there won’t be any phantom properties hanging around to tantalise you.

You can create a watchlist, arrange viewings, and make an offer via the app. It outlines the rental costs and fees unambiguously, so you won’t accidentally create a Faustian pact that you cannot deliver on (movebubble.com).

Master the mortgage

The kerfuffle doesn’t stop once you’re a homeowner. Those who are trying to sell a home should use Nested. The site bills itself as an “estate agent with a difference” and promises to untangle the chain of legal admin around selling. It claims, boldly, that you will move on “chain-free” within 90 days.

Sign up to get a “Nestimate” of your home’s value. The site will guarantee the minimum amount, leaving you free to offer on the next house as a chain-free buyer as soon as the home as listed. Then you can make your move: whatever happens, you’ll receive the Nested guaranteed price on day 90.

Throughout the process attentive members of the team are on hand to help (nested.com).

Habito, “the free online mortgage broker”, aims to simplify the process of applying for a mortgage. It combs the market to find you the best value and most straightforward deal, tracking more than “70 lenders, covering over 20,000 products” — and the list is expanding. Sign up to get a quick-fire estimate of what your mortgage would be — then you’ll be handed on to an adviser who’ll guide you through the application (habito.com).

Stash it

You are on the move, which, unfortunately, requires you to pack everything you own into boxes that you will — in a frenzy of packing tape and bubble wrap — forget to label. Farewell, saucepan.

Try Sortly. It’s a slick app that enables you to create an inventory of what you’re packing and estimate how much it’s worth (sortly.com). The latter is useful if you are putting anything into temporary storage — organisations such as Big Yellow Storage — which has 39 sites in London — will ask for an estimate of value when you check in (bigyellow.co.uk).

If you don’t want to use a warehouse, Storemates is a community solution. Sign up and you can find people near you who have space for you to store things temporarily. It promises to be 50 per cent cheaper than most self-storage — plus, you’ll get that rush of satisfaction for using the sharing economy (storemates.co.uk).

For moving day itself you’ll likely need to haggle, or commit to hours of probing the internet for van quotes — although if you can drive (or can recruit a mate who can), Zipvan is commendable for its simplicity.

There are hundreds of vans all over the capital, you can arrange pick-up and drop-off via the app, and rates start at £10 an hour (with a £19.50 annual joining fee). You’ll be on the move again in no time (zipvan.com).