Hotpads: A Slick Search Tool for Apartments, Rentals, Sublets and Roommates

[photopress:hotpads.jpg,full,alignright]Thanks to John Cook post on Real estate timeline debuts, I found the greatest site for Apartments, Rentals, Sublets and Roommates I have seen. HotPads.com provides users with the ability to find dwellings based on Density, Per Capita and Median Age/Renters/Rent. They even use census data to color code their maps based on this data. For the property owner they create listings on HotPads is free and easy! If you are a landlord, they eve send your listings to Oodle and Google Base.

HotPads currently uses census data to color code our map based on a few different statistics:

  • Population Density
  • Per Capita Income
  • Median Household Income
  • Median Age
  • Percent Renters
  • Median Rent

Here are some examples from Seattle: Seattle, WA

Per Capita Income
[photopress:wa_seattle_perCapitaIncome.jpg,thumb,centered]

Household Income
[photopress:wa_seattle_householdIncome.jpg,thumb,centered]

Median Age
[photopress:wa_seattle_age.jpg,thumb,centered]

Percent Renters
[photopress:wa_seattle_percentRenters.jpg,thumb,centered]

Median Rent
[photopress:wa_seattle_rent.jpg,thumb,centered]

Even though rail stations are not available in the Rain City yet, with HotPads maps you can see various points of interest that might help you decide where to live:

  • Subway and Train Stations
  • Public Schools
  • Private Schools
  • Universities

[photopress:hotpads2.jpg,full,centered]

Points are added to the map with their nifty icons:

Colleges
[photopress:university.png,full,centered]

Schools
[photopress:schoolhouse.png,full,centered]

Train and Subway Stations
[photopress:trainStation.png,full,centered]

They are currently listing the following rail systems:

  • New York City Subway
  • Washington, DC Metro
  • Bay Area Rapid Transit
  • Bay Area’s Caltrain
  • Boston’s MBTA
  • Chicago’s El
  • Los Angeles County Metrorail
  • Denver’s Light Rail
  • Dallas’s DART
  • Miami-Dade County Metro

As John Cook pointed out (looks like Galen has added Shackprices‘ GREAT search to the list), their Real estate timeline is pretty cool too:

[photopress:hotpadstime.jpg,full,centered]

14 thoughts on “Hotpads: A Slick Search Tool for Apartments, Rentals, Sublets and Roommates

  1. Wow. This is the most in-depth post or article about HotPads as of yet. Thanks for taking the time! We are working on adding the public transportation stops for Seattle. They should be up in the next couple of days.

    Douglas Pope
    cofounder
    hotpads.com

  2. Douglas-

    Thanks for the compliment. As I said in the post, you are offering a great service for an area that I feel is untapped. Very informational and user friendly. I look forward to the additions you add to the site.

    Jon

  3. Dustin-

    Me too, maybe we need to change RCG to a payperpost.com model for comments. We could start paying $1.00 a comment 🙂

    Oh well, maybe there are to many property owners and not enough renters? Or maybe this site isn’t as slick as I thought. If that is the case, maybe someone will comment about the sites we should be looking at???

    Jon

  4. It is an excellent article, Jon. Sometimes an article is simply a fabulous reference for readers. They USE the info…without comment.

    Blogging is not always about comments. In fact most people who actually use the info contained in a blog…do not comment on the
    blog at all.

    Very few of my “blog clients” comment on the blog…very, very few. The call me or email me and never comment on the blog.

  5. You are very welcome. ALL of your articles are very good. You should write more often. Fuggedabout the comments…write for the reader…not the talker 🙂

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