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]