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PadMapper Helps You to Find Apartments for Rent on CraigsList

Karl L. Gechlik — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 12:01:58 +0000

Where do you turn when you need to find apartments for rent? Do you go to your local real estate agent? Do you grab the newspaper every day?

Maybe you ask your friends – or beg and plead?

Everyone knows that your first stop should be CraigsList regardless of where you live. I have found my last 3 apartments via CraigsList but this little gem called PadMapper makes it so much easier and more enjoyable! The site isn’t as cutting edge as it used to be (CraigsList that is) but it is very functional. How can we improve the quality of data that we grab from this site? Well I have a way for you!

I know that I have wished for a Google Maps type application within CraigsList to see my choices on a map with the ability to filter out the same stuff you can on CraigsList’s website like bedrooms, bathrooms and price.

This is exactly what PadMapper did – they mashed up CraigsList’s apartment listings with a Google Map. Now you can see all the available apartments in your area on a map! Let’s take a look at the site:

When you first arrive at PadMapper you will see their slogan which explains it all – Making Apartment Hunting Suck Less! I love it! Simply start typing a city or address into the first field and you will be whisked away to a Google Map. You can set your criteria first but I will get back to that in a minute.

I started typing New York and I immediately had a United States Map on my screen. As I hit GO the map became localized to NYC.

There are a lot of listings here. We would now want to filter out all the undesirable apartments for rent and narrow down our search.

We do this by clicking on the Filter Listings option at the bottom of the PadMapper bubble.

You can see that you can set Max/Min Rent price, number of bedrooms, maximum price per bedroom, maximum age of listing, keywords to be found in the listing or title, and if you are in NYC you can make sure you can get to work via the subway.

Wow! And still there are more options including pictures, sublets or no sublets and they also search Apartments.com (apparently).

After you get to narrow down your choices you can click on one of them and it will bring up a bubble with your selections options like the picture you see below:

Once you have the listing up you can email the owner directly, save to favorites in Google Maps, see a street view or report the listing. Oh and of course you can open the Craigslist listing with one click as well!

How do you find apartments for rent in this day and age? Do you know of other sites that aggregate data on apartments from other sites?

If so, we would love to hear about it in the comments.

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4 Sites To Help You Find Cheap, Even Free Real Estate

Guy McDowell — Sat, 30 May 2009 15:00:34 +0000

First thing’s first – there is no such thing as free land. You might find free or amazingly cheap land, but there are always conditions. Often, the government offering the land requires you to build a permanent structure that conforms to their specifications. You may also have to pay to get services such as water, gas, electricity or communications to the lot. That can easily add up to tens of thousands of dollars. The land may also be taxed at fair-market value. Even if the land was free or cheap, it may have a market value of ten, twenty or even fifty thousand dollars.

Mind you, even with those potential costs, if you can get decent land for free or on the cheap, it can still be worth it. This article is going to show you legitimate deals on land or homes under $10,000 USD, many are even free. Let’s take a look where we might be able to find some.

Homes Under 1K

This page lists some major metropolitan areas in the United States of America as well as a rough idea of how many houses are for sale at certain price points. For example, Detroit has 147 listings under $1000, Cincinnati has 33 listings under $1000 and Las Vegas has 37 listings under $5000.

The listings themselves aren’t shown on this site, but it gives you an idea where to start looking, with any of the other real-estate sites listed on MakeUseOf (read The 5 Most Significant Online Property Search Websites – Part 1 and The 5 Most Significant Online Property Search Engines – Part 3, 4, 5)

Most of these come with municipal government orders requiring that the properties be brought up to code or rehabilitated for use as low-income rental properties. Even still, if you have the ability to provide more sweat equity than money, it might be a good deal!

Kansas Free Land

Isn’t Kansas supposed to be a nice state? Seems to me that I heard that before. So why is there free land in Kansas? Maybe the tornado alley thing isn’t a real good selling point. But hey, Kirstie Alley is from Kansas, so it can’t be so bad. They even have a rock band named after them. What more do you want?

There are currently thirteen communities offering free land in Kansas; Atwood, Lincoln, Mankato, Marquette, Ellsworth, Wilson, Kanopolis, Holyrood, Plainville, Stockton, Chetopa, Tescott, and Osborne.

The conditions usually require that you build to their codes and move into the house within 24 months for being approved for the land. Not bad!

Kamsack, Saskatchewan, Canada

Just about 4 years ago, you could get town lots in Alberta for as little as a dollar. Along came the Oil and Gas boom and within a year those same lots were worth around $50,000. If you built on it, it would be in the $200,000 neighbourhood.

Some people say that Saskatchewan is the new Oil and Gas boom province in Canada, and they may be right! Labour is cheaper there and a lot of the people working in the industry in Alberta are from Saskatchewan. The lovely town of Kamsack is offering residential and industrial lots in the $5,000 range. Sure that’s more than a dollar, but you may be eligible for $2000 cashback after building. If you like good, wholesome, small town life with a world class provincial park nearby – Kamsack is for you! There are quite a few other communities in provinces like Saskatchewan, Manitoba, British Columbia, and the Yukon. You just have to dig around the municipal sites.

Re/Max Bulgaria

There are a few countries in Europe where real estate is a steal compared to North America. Take a look at northern Spain as their real estate market is crashing. Beautiful land and climate!

Bulgaria has some pretty nice homes for extremely low prices. Check out this old world charmer – 1400 square feet for only $7,400 USD. That’s less than $6 a square foot! There are four bedrooms, a huge yard and a self-airing toilet (yep, outhouse.)

You would have all of Europe literally at your doorstep. Remember the adage, “A hundred years in North America is a long time, but a hundred miles in Europe is a long way.” Plenty of North Americans’ morning commute could take them through several countries in Europe.

Get out on the net and search around! The deals available are amazing if you are willing to go beyond your front door and do a little work. Maybe you’d have to think about a career change, but you’d own your own home finally! It is this kind of thinking that brought people to North America.

Read other real-estate articles on MakeUseOf. Selling your house? Syndicate your property with Postlets.

Have you thought about picking up and moving somewhere to get a home? What have you found? Any other great sites you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments.

Image credits: wizardofthefiretopmountain

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Top 5 U.S. Apartment Search Engines

Ryan Dube — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:01:09 +0000

Whenever I’m forced to look into moving to another town or city anywhere throughout the United States, I’ve always dreaded the apartment hunting process. Sifting through countless old rental ads in the weekly newspaper is the very last thing I want to do on a Sunday afternoon.

Even worse; making phonecalls, setting up viewings, and dealing with the variety of potential landlords – an assortment of snakes and sleazebags most of the time.

Luckily, the magic of the Internet now simplifies the process of hunting for an apartment. The following top 5 apartment seacrh engines are sure to make your next move significantly easier than your last.

Rating the Top 5 Apartment Search Sites

How do you determine which apartment search sites are the top five? For me, it comes down to to three things – simplicity, features, and results. The site needs to be simple enough so that I can get in and out and do what I need to do without requiring a training course on how to navigate the website.

The website should also provide all of the features that an apartment hunter demands, such as the ability to visually tour apartments or filter search criteria. Most importantly, the site should return the largest number of results as possible.

The following websites meet those basic requirements, and some of them have a few nice bonus features as well.

According to RealEstateRama, the following were the top ten apartment hunting search engines based on the number of times visitors “checked availability” of an apartment on the website.

Popularity is one thing, but as MakeUseOf readers know, features and quality are often far more important than popularity. With this in mind, I tested all ten websites, and have rated the top five apartment search websites based on design, features and ease of use.

#5 – Move.com

Starting off the countdown at number five, Move.com makes the cut with a clean and efficient design.

Move.com lets you search by price range as well as beds and baths, but in addition you can also search by property type as well as amenities and pet requirements. There are article listings under home finance, moving, and home & garden categories.

However, the overall focus of the website seems to be geared toward motivating people away from renting and into becoming a first time home buyer. Two identical sections to the rental search are parallel searches for New Homes and Existing Homes.

The search results included 5 detailed photo listings coming up for Portland, Maine, and all listings including estimated rent prices. The search here is focused on the specific town that you’re looking for, but you can heavily refine that search with the terms listed in the left menu bar.

#4 – ApartmentGuide.com

ApartmentGuide is a very simple, stripped down apartment search where you search by price, beds and baths, property name, or location. The results come up in a clear photo format with a cool interactive map showing where each property is located.

While this site returned fewer results for Portland, Maine (3 vs. 5) than Move.com did, it is still ranked higher due to the fact that the site is devoted to only apartments, and because this website is one of the few apartment search sites that provides a truly interactive map where you can access the listings by clicking an icon within the map.

The site also performs an “intelligent” search for rentals within communities that surround the city you searched.

My favorite feature of the site, however, is the stylish slideshow that’s offered for every property.

This feature alone is a valuable way to get a nice tour of a property well before you take the trip to check it out in person.

#3 – ApartmentHomeLiving.com

ApartmentHomeLiving is the sort of website that you’ll want to visit even if you’re not looking for an apartment. The feel of the sight is light and airy, and the motto says it all, “Live for hot chocolate.”

The search results are nice photo listings pulled from the Apartments.com database, but they aren’t anything to call home about. What makes this apartment search site stand out is obviously the content. There are loads of great features and “answers” about everything to do with moving and apartment living.

In essence this site is like a “souped-up” version of Apartments.com, with a dash of fun thrown in. In the search area, you can even find an apartment based on your personality!

#2 – Apartments.com

Often copied, but still one of the forerunners in the apartment search business, Apartments.com provides greater search features and a better site design than the majority of competitors.

From the very first page, you’ve got a large clickable map for easy one-click apartment searching. Or if you prefer, you can search by typing the location, and also by a whole list of apartment characteristics like type of housing, beds and baths, whether it’s pet friendly, or the apartment and community amenities.

The listings are detailed, with the ability to save results to “favorites,” clear pricing, and many properties offer a “360 degree” tour. Apartments.com is one of the few websites that lists private rental properties as well as large managed properties. In the case of my search for Portland, Maine, the results returned included 8 managed and 2 private rentals.

The site also offers valuable content for renters including sections titled moving center, apartment living, manager center, and landlord resources.

#1 – Rent.com

Rent.com is, by far, the king of the apartment search domain. The site is clearly professionally designed, with a fast and easy initial page featuring a basic search. Unfortunately, to use Rent.com you need to enter your email address. However, I’ve used Rent.com for over three years and have never had a problem with spam through the site.

The power of Rent.com, and the main reason it remains the king of the hill is its extensive apartment database that includes not only managed apartment buildings, but also condos, townhouses and houses.

The bottom line is that Rent.com returns more results than any other site – for my test search for the small city of Portland, Maine, it returned 18 listings.

The listings include large, clear photos and photo galleries, lots of specific details about the apartments, and the price range is clearly displayed on every listing. The “moving center” section of the website offers renters help with transferring utilities and insurance, dealing with truck rentals and storage, and the millions of other details that renters have to worry about during a move.

The Bottom Line

What it ultimately comes down to when you need to decide which site you prefer to use really depends on what you need. If your primary concern is getting the most listings as possible, Rent.com is the first place you should go to. However, if you’re just interested in reading quality articles about moving, or finding advice about how to deal with the process, many of the other sites on this top 5 list fit the bill quite well.

Have you moved recently? If so, did you use any of the above top apartment seacrh engines to find an apartment? Any other ones? Offer your opinion in the comments section below.

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The 5 Most Significant Online Property Search Engines – Part 3,4, 5

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:31:48 +0000

In the previous installments we discovered the two major real estate search engines, Realtor.com and Craigslist. Today we’ll take a quick look at Yahoo Real Estate and then spin by Zillow and Trulia to wrap up the series.

Yahoo Real Estate puts a different spin on things. Remember that Realtor.com is Realtor® controlled and Craigslist is totally uncontrolled, except by the community and system moderators. Yahoo on the other hand, has entered into agreements with real estate brokers to display listings as well as into agreements with local MLS’s to display their listings. So you end up with a pretty good representation of what is available from real estate professionals.

Yahoo also shows you what’s for rent and what homes are in foreclosure, which is a nice feature (although you generally have to register with a third party to see the property details on the foreclosures)

Here is the home page of Yahoo Real Estate:

To illustrate how to use the site, we’ll take a trip to Beverly Hills, California 90210 to see if we can find any homes in foreclosure at a bargain price:

As you can see we found two for under a million dollars! Let’s select the top one and see what we can learn about the property.

Hmmm…we get some detail, but not much. If we want more we have to register with a third party. Notice the parts highlighted in green?

If we click on the ‘Neighborhood’ button on the left side we will get some info about the weather, the neighborhood, schools and more.

As you can see, we can find homes to buy using the free tools at Realtor.com, Craigslist and Yahoo Real Estate, but none of these sites really helps with analyzing whether a particular home is a good buy. This is where our next site comes into play.

Trulia is one of those new sites in the real estate space that fills a definite niche. They do so by providing a number of different analytical tools as well as enlisting the real estate professional to answer questions. This works a lot like Yahoo Questions in that you can ask real estate questions and get answers from a professional that you can use along with Trulia’s analytics.

Here is the Trulia home page that I have started at Beverly Hills 90210:

Right away you’ll get some stats and the ability to ask questions. But let’s follow the property we found at Yahoo and see what we can learn at Trulia.

Plus you have the comparisons with Yahoo Answers :

You will still have to register with a third party to get the details of the home such as its address, but Trulia starts to give more details on pricing as you can see from the graph. For even more analytics, just click on the “More Charts and Data” button :

That gives us a pretty good idea of what the values are and what the area is like, but there is one more place to check to be sure that we have a handle on the values before we call our agent to start the purchase ball rolling, and that would be Zillow.

Zillow uses public information from tax rolls as well as input from homeowners and real estate professionals to produce what they call a “zestimate” or their opinion of the property’s value. In many cases they are dead wrong, but in many other cases they are surprisingly accurate. Which you will experience is hard to say, but if they are significantly off of what you see on Trulia, then Zillow may be wrong. They are very accurate with tract homes that are similar to each other, but have the most difficulty with custom homes. That should not be held against them as even real estate professionals and appraisers find it hard to determine accurate values on custom homes.

Here is what you find at Zillow:

If you search for our Elderidge Drive example you get this:

Taking our 90210 example, you can see that they show every parcel on Elderidge Drive with a price. This is the “zestimate” that I mentioned. Since I don’t have the address of the Elderidge Drive house, (I didn’t want to register with RealtyTrac), I can’t be sure which parcel is the right one. But judging from the prices on that street, my guess is that this would be a good home to investigate. The homes are priced significantly higher that what is being asked by the bank to pay off the existing loan.

So, by using the free tools that are available, I can search for homes for sale, for rent and in foreclosure. I can compare neighborhoods, schools, amenities and I can see whether something is a good buy or not. All of this before I have to ever speak to a human being!

If you are even thinking about jumping into the US real estate market to take advantage of the incredible deals that are available, you’ll want to use the tools that we have talked about in this series of articles. You’ll be informed to make the decision that’s right for you and you’ll feel more comfortable with offers that you make.

If you have other free tools that you like, let us know about them in the comments!

(By) Jerry Kidd is a California Real Estate Broker, blogger, educator and author of Realty Tech Bytes

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The 5 Most Significant Online Property Search Websites – Part 2

Jerry Kidd — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:55:01 +0000

Last time we looked at Realtor.com, this time we will take a hard look at Craigslist.

It’s hard to take some shots at Craigslist without running the risk of getting shot back at by the hardline Craigslist users, of which I am one as well. CL offers so many people a free way to advertise (or inexpensive depending on what you are advertising) that most of us are willing to overlook its flaws.

And if truth be told, the flaws are not so much with CL as they are with the advertisers. You see, CL is supposedly policed by the community with the moderators stepping in when enough community members “flag” a posting as being inappropriate. The problem with this method when dealing with real estate is that who knows enough about the property to be sure of what they are flagging? Is it the seller who in many cases may be desperate to attract any “buyer” with the hopes of sorting things out later? Is it the real estate agent who is often ignorant of online advertising guidelines? Or is it a “buyer” who spent time and gasoline to travel to a house that wasn’t what it was cracked up to be? Obviously, in these scenarios, there will be spotty enforcement of guidelines and your searching experience will reflect that fact.

Let’s take a look at the process and along the way I’ll give you some tips on how to safely navigate Craigslist real estate listings.

Here is the page you come to when you type in the Craigslist URL.

As you can see, CL is International in scope, and although there are some small regional differences, things work pretty much the same no matter which country or city you pick. So, pick your region and click on it. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, so that is where I will start.

Notice the red circle. Under the major heading of housing, there are 9 sub headings from apartments to parking and storage. At the bottom you find real estate for sale. This is where we are going to look to start our search for the perfect home!

At arrow #1 you can see that it is possible to search the entire SF Bay Area, or search by the various regions within the Bay Area. It really helps to narrow your search down by using the region that you want to start with. At arrow number two you can see the considerable sized drop down list. Why Craig does this is beyond me. I can see just having the real estate categories there, but I guess Craig thinks that the users will change their mind and decide to look for a job while searching for real estate!

Here I have selected an area of the SF Bay Area known as the east bay (Arrow #1). Once I did that, the big drop down list (arrow #4) contains a list of the Bay Area cities. I wanted to look for homes where the seller was motivated (arrow #2) and all I want to spend is $500,000 to $575,000 USD (arrow #3)

This search (without actually selecting a city) found 12 listings. (Arrow #5)

Of those twelve, 7 are in one city, so we’ll concentrate on that city.

Now this is where we have to start to understand what is going on here. If you were to click on each of these listings you would find that there are three listings here by two local real estate agents. They have varying degrees of expertise in displaying the information on the houses. One uses Postlets (which I have previously written about here on Make Use Of) and the other uses his own template. Both are pretty effective in conveying the info you would want in order to decide to go see the house. Two of the ads are a ‘come on and get you give up your contact info’ to someone who claims to have a list of all the area foreclosures and the rest are being sold by the owners with varying degrees of effectiveness.

Here is one of the owner generated ads:

Not a lot to go on is there?

Here is a Postlets ad from a real estate agent.

As you can see, there is much more information available to you.

So, here is the wrap up. Craigslist is a grab bag of things. There is no consistency as to what you will find. You will find that some sellers advertise directly, but since most have never done it before, they don’t know enough to put lots of information in the ad. Even the real estate agents have no consistency in what they offer. And then there are the scammers who are trying to entice you to give up your contact info so that they can build a list of people to try to sell something to.

None of that sounds very good, so why use CL? In my opinion you should use CL as part of your search strategy for several reasons. One of the best reasons is because you can find things that are put on by the sellers themselves. There may be homes that are not on the MLS. In other words, you may find a lot of homes for sale by the owner.

But the most important reason, in my opinion, is the ability to search on words like “motivated” or “desperate” which can lead you to bargains that would be hard to spot otherwise.

You want to start your search on Realtor.com to get the big picture, and then you want to look at Craigslist to get some local information and to perhaps smoke out a bargain.

Next time we will look at Yahoo Real Estate to see how that search giant handles real estate search.

(By) Jerry Kidd is a California Real Estate Broker, blogger, educator and author of Realty Tech Bytes

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The 5 Most Significant Online Property Search Websites – Part 1

Jerry Kidd — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:40:43 +0000

So say you want to buy a house. If you read the newspapers or watch TV or even pickup your news online, you can’t help but notice that the US real estate market is in the tank. There are many good deals to be had, if you could only find them, and then be sure that they were really a smart buy.

But where do you start? The local newspaper? The homes for sale magazines in the supermarket? Do you drive around (at $4.55USD a gallon?) and look for signs?

No! You are a reader of MakeUseOf.com and you have a technology slant on the things that you do, so you want to use online tools to find that house. This is your lucky day because today I kick off a five part series on what I consider to be the 5 most significant online home search websites currently available in the United States.

I am a real estate broker, licensed in California, and I work in the San Francisco Bay Area, arguably one of the technology hot spots on the globe. People here EXPECT great tools to be available to them in every area of endeavor, and real estate is no exception.

The trouble is, how do you know which tool does what and which ones do it right? That’s what I hope to clear up for you with this series. We’ll start with Realtor.com, the granddaddy of them all. They claim to have most of the homes for sale listings, and they probably do, given their close association with the National Association of Realtors®. However, in my not so humble opinion, just having most of the listings does not make them the best choice for everything you need to know.

Let’s take a look:

This is the landing page of Realtor.com. Please notice the red circles, red arrows and numbers because I want to talk about each of those areas.

To start with number 1 and number 2, you can see a place to login. What a login? No way. Not a problem, you don’t have to login, the tools to search are free. But if you wanted to set up alerts to receive emails when a property similar to what you are searching for turns up, you’ll have to establish an account. The process isn’t all that hard though.

Next is number 3. Find Property Values. This is an Alpha of a new tool that Realtor.com is developing and as an Alpha, it’s not all together yet. It is worth looking at though because it allows you to search for homes using a map (although none of the three houses for sale on my street show up!). The really cool feature is that you can view a “heat” map that shows the range of prices across the US much like a weather map shows you temperatures.

This would be useful if you wanted to quickly gauge where you could buy a house for say $150,000. (not too many places).

Next we come to a blatant lie! Number 4 points to two areas where you are promised an “immediate” price quote on your own home if you had one to sell. The sad truth is that if you click on those links you are asked to give up some contact info, the address of your house and guess what’s next? A pop up window from a Realtor® who is local to your area and who has bid the most money for the privilege of having the chance to “snag” you as a customer. The “immediate” report is nowhere to be found because the local Realtor® has to generate it. It’s not an automated system and it exposes your contact info to the Realtor®. Don’t get me wrong, this is not necessarily bad, but at this stage of your search you don’t want to complicate things, so say no thanks to this tool!

Number 5 is almost as bad as number 4. This one is called Market Conditions. When you go to this page you get to tell it what area you are in and it purportedly takes you to the information on the local market that is provided by a local “expert”. Now, I can only speak for my area, but when I checked to see who the local experts were, I did not recognize any of them as being active in my area. They are apparently the highest bidders and the info they provide is generally available elsewhere. I didn’t see any real insight from any of them. Your mileage may vary, but how would you know?

By now you are probably thinking that there is no value in Realtor.com, but actually I have saved the best for last. The thing that Realtor.com really shines at is the search. Given that they have almost all of the available US listings and a lot of the Canadian inventory, this is the logical place to start a search for property. Here is the advanced search form from number 6:

And here is a sample results page:

I set the search parameters pretty tight to get these two results, basically I set the price range and beds and bath count to just get a few listings.

Notice that these listings have a gold border around the left side and the top. These are what is known as showcase listings. The listing agent has paid to have these listings enhanced with additional photos and property tours. The agent also gets some additional exposure as the next picture will show:

This is where Realtor.com shines. There are a number of photos, a featured tour of the home, great detail on the home itself and the ability to print a brochure and to also request a showing. The listing agent is also featured; in this case it is my beautiful wife!

So, even though I started out tearing Realtor.com apart, where it really shines is in the ability to search over 3 million active listings and present the data in a visually appealing format. This IS where you should start to develop your list of properties that are listed with a Realtor®.

There are better tools available for doing analysis, and we’ll look at them after we look at a few other search engines. Next time we’ll look at Craigslist!

In the meantime, why don’t you let me know what property search sites you like, and why?

(By) Jerry Kidd is a California Real Estate Broker, blogger, educator and author of Realty Tech Bytes

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Make Use Of Podcast #9: Selling your home online, new Twitter clone and Syncplicity

Jason Mayoff — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 12:08:25 +0000

This week on the podcast I’m talking to Jerry Kidd, one of Make Use Of’s newest writers, about a great tool to help you sell your home online. I’m also looking at some Make Use Of articles about Bit torrent, bookmarklets, and syncing. Plus, a first look at the latest Twitter clone, identi.ca.

I’d love to hear from you. Send me your MP3 files containing comments about the show, reviews of your favourite websites or just general chitchat. I’ll choose a few to play on the show each week. Send them to podcast [at] makeuseof [dot] com.

If you look underneath the links from the show on this page, you will see a little media player where you can listen to the podcast right here on the site. Or if you prefer, you can right-click on the “audio MP3″ logo and save the MP3 file to your computer for listening on your MP3 player or iPod.

The podcast is available through iTunes so don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast if you have an iPod, or in another podcatcher if you have a different MP3 player.

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Syndicate Your Property For Sale With Postlets

Jerry Kidd — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:49:06 +0000

There are so many websites now where you can search for real estate and each one has their own quirks, foibles, specialties and value to people looking to find a home. It seems that each week another one pops up. You can search these sites by geographic area, price, size, room count and much more. You can see pictures, videos, school scores, vital statistics on the homes and contact the real estate agent who has it listed. You can arrange for showings, get more information and map the home’s location.

All of this is great, but how does the information get to these web sites? The sad truth is that for most of the listings, it’s done by an automatic feed from the local Multiple Listing Service. That feed often does not contain enough information for a prospective buyer to be able to truly understand what they are viewing. Of course, the real estate agent can often “enhance” the listing with additional pictures and more detailed information, but given the sheer volume of real estate web sites to enhance, the process is so time consuming that it simply does not get done all of the time.

Enter a cool web application called Postlets. Postlets is a FREE tool that allows a homeowner selling their own home, or a real estate agent with the listing, to create a free account. Then the user adds information about the property by clicking check boxes and filling in forms to create a very good looking “advertisement”.

The free version will also accept up to 6 JPG photos. There is the ability to “upgrade” to the “Plus” version which removes the ads that support the free version, add up to 18 photos, video and more for US$5.

Once you have created your Postlet, it is syndicated to over eleven real estate listing search sites including Zillow, Trulia and Google Base to name a few. The Postlet has a 60 day life and can be renewed if the listing doesn’t sell.

Finally, the site also creates the HTML that you will need to accomplish a Craigslist posting and will deliver you directly to the Craigslist website so that you can create an ad on Craigslist by pasting the HTML into the appropriate form.

Postlets are also available for those of you trying to sell a car.

Here is how to get started. Go to the signup page, fill in the form and click on Create Account.

After you have created your account you will be able to start your first Postlet by filling in the first of six screens.

The next screen allows you to start filling in information about the property. You can choose from residential, commercial, vacation properties and rental properties, as property types.

The third screen allows you to check off boxes to show all of the different property features, a quick and easy process.

The next screen is where you can upload up to 6 photos for the free version, and up to 18 photos with the “Plus” version.

No web publishing is ever complete until you get a chance to review your work. You can edit any of the entries that you have made and when you are happy with what you have, you can hit the “Continue” button at the bottom of the page to queue up the Postlet for submission to the various websites it serves.

Here is the fruit of our labors! This is an ad destined for Craigslist made with Postlets. The final screen gives you the code to embed in Craigslist (You have to do this yourself for Craigslist due to their terms of service) but the ad is automatically submitted to the sites that you choose.

The price is right (either free or no more than $5), the service is great, and the seller gets their home exposed professionally on many websites. If you are a real estate agent or home seller, what’s not to like? Plus if you are a home hunter, you will find that ads created by Postlets offer a lot more information to you than is usually available.

What websites and advertising services have you used in the past to sell your property? Let us know in the comments.

(By) Jerry Kidd is a California Real Estate Broker, blogger, educator and author of Realty Tech Bytes.

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20+ Real Estate Search and Information Tools

Adam Hirsch — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 21:58:11 +0000

Contributed by makeuseof guest-writer Adam Hirsch

Considering that I am in Real Estate I only figured it would be appropriate to share the knowledge that I’ve acquired over the past 4 years. I am in real estate in New York City, so a lot of the tools I use are very specified to New York, however these are the select greats from my vast collection of bookmarks of the real estate tools that are national (United States) and some International.

No Matter what you are looking for in Real Estate, these are the search tools to find them. I would also appreciate it if you had any other free helpful sites or web applications to please let me know in the comments. Enjoy…

Major Real Estate Sites

(1) Trulia

Trulia is by far my favorite pick for a real estate search, not only is it fully stocked with properties, it is also stocked on features that include: Google Map Layout (Satellite/Hybrid Option); Well done Search Results Layout; Property Preview Option in Search Results; Easily sort-able and customizable; Free Membership with abilities for saving, alerts, information; Large Web Community; Comparables on Screen and Similar Properties; Real Estate Guides; Community Information and Statistics; Trulia also provides an API.

(2) Zillow

Zillow is still in Beta (for some reason) and is less attractive than Trulia. However, if offers a lot of similar features including a Community and extensive Real Estate Guides. There are also way too many advertisements which divert your attention from the heart of the matter. Some of their positive features are well developed comparables, Neighborhood pages and what they like to call Zestimates or estimates based on comparable and other relevant information to provide an estimated price. Zillow also provides an API for properties and Zestimates. More on Zillow.

(3) Yahoo Real Estate

Yahoo’s real estate site is almost a mashup of several services, including Zillow’s Zestimates and features from Realtor.com, however, they definitely do not have the vast database of properties comparatively (probably because they charge to list properties). Surprisingly, Yahoo has done a unique job of integrating everything related to real estate including school research, mortgages, credit scores, foreclosure information and a recently updated neighborhood section.

(4) New York Times

I personally hate the New York Times Real Estate section, but New Yorker’s consider it the Bible of real estate properties. I was surprised to see many sales and rentals available in most of the United States. Obviously, the New York Times is a large part of the real estate article database, however, I think their features and options are relatively standard for the real estate industry.

(5) Propsmart

A simplistic map based real estate search engine for not only Sales and Rentals, but also includes commercial real estate. Propsmart not only integrates their properties with Google Maps but they also provide Google Earth feeds for major cities. The only additional feature to note is the ability to rate your properties.

(6) Terabitz

Recently launched real estate portal ingeniously linked several databases and used several APIs to create your own personal real estate dashboard. Highly customizable and drag and drop functionality. It seems there are still some bugs in the system and definitely some additional tweaking needed to the layout, but for now Terabitz is worth trying. It includes sales, rentals, foreclosures, craigslist feeds, for sale by owner listings and more. In addition, it includes functional drag and drop modules for local amenities, statistics and information in addition to a rich financial section.

(7) HotPads

Hotpads offers only Rentals. Simplistic mashup of rental properties. The best part of HotPads is the simple adjustments of your criteria on the map. The worst part is once you find the rental, it gets confusing. Although, to my big surprise, the comparable listings presented in a really well-organized manner. They should take a lesson from that page.

Mass Marketplace Sites with Real Estate Listings

(8) Craigslist

Craigslist, which is now thoroughly international, is by far the best place to get a deal and unfortunately the best place to get swindled. So browse carefully. The features are minimal; however, it is the best place to get a deal since it is for the most part directly from owners since it is a cheap/free place to advertise real estate properties. It is dangerous because it is cheap/free and it is popular, so people like to take advantage. NEVER go alone to any property.

(9) Housing Maps (Craigslist Mashup) – Housing Maps recently added filters for their search, which definitely makes searching a whole lot easier. There are sales and rental options all laid out on a Google Map. Only major cities.

(10) MapsKrieg (Craigslist Mashup) – Another Google Maps Craigslist mashup, however compared to Housing Maps, there are only points on a map with no real search features other than the main categories. Rather slow loading times as well.

(11) Google Base

Google Base is unfortunately a Craigslist with a Google Map and very little functionality. However, the database is very large since it is free to list and thankfully, the search functions are decent. Also offers RSS feeds for searches. The worst aspect is definitely the keyword search function, since the details are minimal who knows what to search for… Google Base is still in beta and Google has paid very little attention to it in the past year, so hopefully we can expect changes in the near future.

(12) Oodle

Oodle has grown a lot in the past few years. Their real estate database has also been heavily advertised throughout their sister/brother sites. Their database is large not only because it’s free, but they have several other databases feeding in as well as an API.

(13) Listpic (Oodle Mashup) – Listpic used to be a Craigslist mashup, but there was such a drain on Craigslist’s system that they had to cut them off since really the main focus of Listpic is the photos. So they switched to Oodle. The features are similar to Craigslist/Oodle but is slightly pleasant to look at since the main headings contain photos which are adjustable in size.

(14) Edgio

The smaller Oodle as I like to call it, is pretty pathetic. I especially love the ‘some results provided by eBay’ on the bottom of the results. It seems that they are most proud of their statistics and database, which is pretty impressive… “Access over 100 million listings in 1,417,876 cities and 141 countries and 9,863,736 listings from 1,159 edge-direct feeds and 3,319 listings from 143 Classified Boards”

(15) Backpage

The Backpage is a rather simple version of Craigslist from the Village Voice. The only feature on here that Craigslist does not have is the ability to view the results with full text and information. Pretty clever if you ask me.

(16) Vast

Simple search capabilities and a pleasant layout and detailed, well organized results makes Vast a notable competitor. Their database is also rather large and includes all major US cities and additionally London.

(17) Kijiji

Supposedly the failed attempt from eBay to replicate the massively popular Craigslist phenomenon, although it still has a major presence is many international countries. It’s considered failure because it never quite took off in the United States, however, there are a few listings for several major US cities and even larger outside of the United States.

Real Estate Feed Searches:

(19) Realty Feed Search – Search the “feed directory of residential properties, commercial properties and informational topics”. Basically it doesn’t search through feeds but FOR feeds, which can come in handy if you want to keep on top of certain Real Estate Topics…

(20) Realty Feeds – Same as above, but thousands time better. The look and feel and functionality of Realty Feeds is very well done, as well as being International.

Other Notable Real Estate Tools:

(21) vFlyer – “vFlyer is a classified ad creation, management and submission platform that enables online sellers to quickly and easily create attractive classified ads or ‘virtual flyers’ that can be posted on dozens of leading online marketplaces in a few simple clicks.” There are also many more options including 5 free active flyers for the free version. There are also premium options.

(22) Walkscore – “Walk Score shows you a map of what’s nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property. Buying a house in a walkable neighborhood is good for your health and good for the environment.”

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