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Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by quoderat on Sunday April 12, 2009 @04:12PM (#558823)
I use PadMapper.

http://www.padmapper.com

Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by padmapper on Sunday April 12, 2009 @07:07PM (#559052)
Hey, thanks for the plug. If anyone has any questions or suggestions, please feel free to email me at [email protected] (or use the feedback link on the site). It's still pretty new, and there's definitely room for improvement.
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by GavinB on Sunday April 12, 2009 @09:04PM (#559205)
Great site. I don't know how difficult it would be to implement or whether it would hurt the performance, but it would be great if you overlaid the subway lines. See http://www.onnyturf.com/subway/ for an example.

Frankly, I don't know why google hasn't done this themselves, it's incredibly useful.

Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by padmapper on Monday April 13, 2009 @12:54AM (#559404)
Good idea - it would slow it down a bit, but I'm pretty sure it would be useful. The subway commute-time filter is a bit limited in its use, but you can use it to try areas for their commute time to other areas.

Also, it's not as useful, but if you zoom in on the metro stations on any google map, it'll tell you what lines stop there.

Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by truebosko on Sunday April 12, 2009 @09:22PM (#559220)
Amazing site. I'm moving to Montreal and have been sorting through TONS of listings (not used to it all, coming from a much smaller city!) and it's been pretty tiresome

This site is seriously a godsend and will instantly reduce our stress in finding a place.

Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by potatolicious on Sunday April 12, 2009 @09:14PM (#559210)
Great site :) I've seen people do Google Maps-integrated housing searches, but they always insist on using their own (very limited) data. It's about time someone did this with CL :)

I'm currently looking for housing too, so thanks a ton :)

Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by car on Sunday April 12, 2009 @08:55PM (#559197)
Great job! We'll be using padmapper on our house hunt from now on.

How do you handle CL entries without street location information?

Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by padmapper on Monday April 13, 2009 @12:48AM (#559399)
Unfortunately, PadMapper has to ignore those - there's nothing that can really be done. This means that about 1/2-2/3 of listings end up getting ignored. The ones that are left are less likely to be a waste of your time, though.
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by keeptrying on Sunday April 12, 2009 @10:49PM (#559295)
Great site. Love the way you've maximized the amount of apartments and minimized the size of the controls. Good job!
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by lsb on Sunday April 12, 2009 @09:46PM (#559243)
It's a lovely UI, but golly is it slow.
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by padmapper on Monday April 13, 2009 @12:47AM (#559398)
Thanks!

What browser are you using? It basically doesn't support IE 6/7 because their anemic Javascript engines make it torturously slow. I'm very curious to hear about your experience, though... [email protected]

Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by potatolicious on Monday April 13, 2009 @01:59AM (#559460)
It's pretty fast on the Safari beta... that being said, it is pretty slow if you try to zoom into the map via mousewheel, since it does an update even at high zoom levels. Maybe limit updates to every X zoom levels at the high level, and then update at every zoom for the finer ones.
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by padmapper on Monday April 13, 2009 @02:07AM (#559474)
Ah yeah, that might be an optimization worth making. Thanks for the feedback.
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by potatolicious on Monday April 13, 2009 @03:26AM (#559535)
Ability to link to the current view would be nice... I wanted to show a friend a neighbourhood I was looking at but couldn't :) Sorry to suggesting such low-priority things, I'm a bit OCD about these things...
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by padmapper on Monday April 13, 2009 @03:25PM (#560287)
That's actually something I've been wanting to do for a while, I just haven't gotten around to it - basically a full "save state".

A workaround is to save something in the neighborhood to your favorites list, and then save the favorites list. This'll shoot you an email with a link that can restore that list, and you can send/forward that link to your friend. Once the list is loaded up, they can click on the go to marker button/graphic in the saved favorites list.

Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by potatolicious on Monday April 13, 2009 @05:10PM (#560513)
On a simpler scale, can't you do this the Google Maps way? Which is to say, specify a center lat/long and a zoom level. This way you're not bookmarking any data specifically, but bookmarking your view instead.

Depends on use case: the case I was in was just that I wanted to show a friend what was available in a particular neighbourhood, as opposed to a specific set of postings.

Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by padmapper on Monday April 13, 2009 @06:42PM (#560663)
Yeah, that's basically what I want to do - save the view as well as the filters that have been applied.
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by spencerfry on Sunday April 12, 2009 @04:35PM (#558842)
Hadn't seen that before. Nice find.
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by drp on Sunday April 12, 2009 @08:58PM (#559200)
I work at (and and found my current apartment using) HotPads - http://hotpads.com We list about 300k rental houses and apartments all over the US
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by andrewljohnson on Sunday April 12, 2009 @04:46PM (#558855)
I wrote a map mash-up of CraigsList ads recently: http://www.trailbehind.com/housing_map
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by replicatorblog on Sunday April 12, 2009 @04:57PM (#558868)
If you are looking for short term housing Air Bed & Breakfast works pretty well. (www.airbnb.com) It is also a YCombinator company.
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by vaksel on Sunday April 12, 2009 @06:10PM (#558967)
If I was looking now, I'd only use Craigslist
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by Vivtek on Monday April 13, 2009 @12:06AM (#559364)
Last time I tried looking using Craigslist (this was in Bloomington, IN in 2006) there was about a 1:1 spam/ham ratio. I gave up in disgust pretty quickly.
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by NoBSWebDesign on Monday April 13, 2009 @09:20AM (#559750)
If you're looking for student rental housing by any chance, that's what our startup is for... http://www.ratemystudentrental.com

For non-student housing, I use http://www.mapskrieg.com

Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by joshwa on Monday April 13, 2009 @12:44AM (#559395)
Using my own search organization tool called FlowThing:

http://i44.tinypic.com/erei4g.jpg

Email me for an invite code... in a very private alpha right now.

Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by shubhamharnal on Monday April 13, 2009 @12:18PM (#559957)
Ubiquity + Craigslist Check the video at: http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by mhp on Sunday April 12, 2009 @04:57PM (#558866)
streeteasy.com in NYC
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by krschultz on Monday April 13, 2009 @12:26AM (#559379)
Wow this is the best one I've seen for NYC by far
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by zackola on Sunday April 12, 2009 @07:56PM (#559115)
+1 ... Ok fine I work there, but I use it too!
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by mattstein on Sunday April 12, 2009 @05:19PM (#558895)
housingmaps.com
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by tzetzefly on Monday April 13, 2009 @08:40AM (#559716)
I like redfin.com, estately.com, and realtor.com. Then use dwellicious.com to bookmark and track listings from different sites in one place.
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by wmli on Sunday April 12, 2009 @06:16PM (#558977)
http://www.booli.se in Sweden. Pretty good UI.
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by kierank on Sunday April 12, 2009 @07:01PM (#559041)
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by jerryji on Sunday April 12, 2009 @05:18PM (#558893)
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by shubhamharnal on Monday April 13, 2009 @12:18PM (#559956)
Ubiquity + Craigslist Check the video at: http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by dejb on Sunday April 12, 2009 @11:17PM (#559317)
www.realestate.com.au - they have some annoying problems but they are the dominant force with the most listings.
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by smileplease on Sunday April 12, 2009 @05:23PM (#558902)
globrix.com in UK
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by jlees on Sunday April 12, 2009 @06:29PM (#558998)
I prefer gumtree.com
Re:Ask HN: What do you use when searching for houses or apar... by rs on Sunday April 12, 2009 @11:57PM (#559353)
For me its findaproperty.com for UK (esp London), but as someone previously posted, rightmove.co.uk is pretty good as well