HotPads Daily :: The Official Blog of HotPads.com

Real Estate Listings Hit Google Maps

Our pals in Mountain View recently launched new enhancements to Google Maps that include (drumroll, please) REAL ESTATE LISTINGS.  Users pulling up maps just need to hit the Show search options link and select "Real Estate" as a category.

These listings come from Google Base, one of the many listing distributions partners that HotPads works with to get most exposure for the apartment community managers and real estate brokers who rely on HotPads for quality leads.  So HotPads listings should appear as part of this new online tool.

The housing search process is rapidly becoming a visual, map-based medium (hence the huge success of HotPads.com) and this is an interesting step for Google, which perfected text/link searches on the web.

Cool DC Pad in a.t. Blog Contest

Washington-based blogger Collen Quinn recently posted a great piece about her friend Grace's loft for the apartment therapy blog competition. Grace's pad would be considered hot, but it's way too cool.  Check out the floors!

But it's not for sale, so if you want one like it of your own you'll have to search for a Washington, DC apartment or condo on HotPads.com.

So vote for Colleen's entry by awarding her apartment therapy "cupcakes."  Which is kind of ironic since the staff of HotPads is now addicted to cupcakes from our new neighborhood find, Georgetown Cupcake.

Mapping Site Shows Housing/Commuting Tradeoffs

The Housing + Transportation Affordability Index is a new map-based tool, created by the Center for Neighborhood Technology, that measures the true cost of housing when weighed against the costs of transportation for 52 metro areas in the U.S.

The methodology behind the numbers is complex and the raw data is a bit outdated (taken from the 2000 Census) but the interactive maps make it easy to see which areas meet the target standards for affordability.

This can help folks decide if getting a cheaper house in the outer suburbs is worth the extra commuting expense or if the sky-high real estate prices that still hold in some city centers are unbearable.  The good news: cheap places abound on the HotPads housing search.  Find an affordable area, then see HotPads for deals on apartments, condos and homes for sale.

Props to the real estate blog at the Wall Street Journal.

Salt Lake Tribune Map Mashup Tracks Quake Tremors

In the wake of the recent earthquake in Nevada that shook the mountain states, the Salt Lake Tribune posted a Yahoo Maps/Mapbuilder mashup that allows readers to tag where they felt the quake tremors.  You can check it out for yourself here.

This was a doozy, registering a 6.0 on the Richter scale.  We hope that everyone affected is able to quickly pick up the pieces.

Luckily, major damage did not extend all the way to Salt Lake City, so you can still look for great Salt Lake City real estate on the interactive maps from HotPads.com.

Find your Wayward Pooch with Zoombak

Now here's a new application that combines a few of our favorite things: dogs, more dogs and web 2.0 mapping.

The Zoombak™ Advanced GPS Dog Locator will find your runaway canine using the Assisted Global Positioning System (a combination of both satellite and cellular tech) on a lightweight locator fob that attaches to a dog’s collar with pouch. You can pinpoint your dog’s location on-demand via Zoombak.com, mobile phone or live customer care. You can also determine your dog's location in real time using our continuous tracking option.

Runaway pups aren't a concern for HotPads since luckily for us, neither Dora nor Bozzley are built for speed.

In any case, Zoombak looks very cool, but stick with HotPads when you need help finding an apartment or real estate for sale.

The iPhone for Map Geeks like Us

Garmin International, known for their wide array of GPS units, made a big splash in the consumer electronics world this week when they announced the introduction of their newest product, the  nüvifone.

Due in stores later this year, it combines a cell phone, mobile Internet browser and personal navigation system.  Garmin has long partnered with other firms to provide GPS software for their devices, but this is the company's first take at it's own phone hardware. 

And what a sleek lookin' piece of hardware it is.  When powered on, the big touchscreen display reveals three icons — “Call,” “Search,” and “View Map.” The built-in camera is even designed to geotag pictures with the lats and longs of where they are taken.

Check out their press release for more info and wait for the review when we use it to search for Washington real estate on HotPads.

StreetAdvisor wants to give you the local 411

A new website looks to give home buyers and renters a look into the quality of life of neighborhoods on a street-by-street basis with contributions from the community itself.

What TripAdvisor.com is to travel, epinions.com is to products, and Yelp.com is to restaurant reviews, StreetAdvisor is to streets.  (Their words, not mine.)

Information is provided with a combination of five-star ratings, wiki-type articles and photo/video uploads.  Ratings are given in categories like nightlife, cell phone reception and cost of living.  Real estate junkies can put in recent sales data.

The information is different than what is provided on the HotPads area pages, since it's less "hard stats" and more "read my rant." (Or rave.)  The site is well put together, and the biggest drawback is the lack of content since it's so new.  There's a lot of competition here, but it may be one to watch.

Hungry for more, read their recent press release.

Real Estate Pros Becoming Net Entrepreneurs?

A recent survey of works in the real estate and financial services fields indicated that almost 30% have either started, or are thinking about starting, an Internet/IT related business.  Conducted by the social network PartnerUp, these survey results have some folks worried that droves of housing bubble refugees will swarm the fair shores of Web 2.0 and set up squalid camps rife with violence and disease.  ( Well, maybe first-person-shooter games and computer viruses.)

Although that number seems awfully high, this would be a good thing.  When things are going as well as they had been for real estate and mortgage pros, there was little incentive to innovate.  That allowed HotPads.com to enter the market with a better way to search for homes, apartments and rentals.  Maybe someone will come up with a new mortgage system or home improvement site.

For those who are thinking about investing their time or money in an Internet biz, check on Inc.com's take on bubbles (both real estate and Web 2.0) and learn more about the skills needed to survive.

Our Little Flex Machine

Congratulations to Doug McCune on starting to write "Flex 3 For Dummies" with Deepa Subramanium.   He announced this on his blog, DougMcCune.com.  If you visit his post you have the opportunity to virtually throw a bunch of Dummy books at each other and watch them bounce off each other, thanks to Flex. 

Doug is a former HotPads team member.  This is the first book from the HotPads family...and we are thankful it is not an exposé.  So, for any Adobe Flash and Flex developers out there, keep an eye peeled in Spring of 2008.  Who wouldn't want to read a book by this guy:

Must See: Construction Cam Tracks New DC Ballpark

Being based in the nation's capital, Team HotPads can't wait for the next year when the spanking new stadium for the Washington Nationals opens.  We're not all baseball fans, but we are quite partial to beer and grilled foods.

While we wait, we can check out the awesome stadium construction webcam that shows a log of daily images of the stadium throughout its construction. This is a really great Web 2.0 real estate application, run by a company called OxBlue.

You have a choice of views, either from the press box or from center field.  You can go to a given day of the construction, pick your zoom level, email images to friends and more.  You even get a snapshot of what the weather did each day.

The coolest feature of the site is a time-lapse video that shows the entire construction progress in under a minute.  You can see the stadium rising from a hole in the ground to its current nearly-completed status.  I love seeing the weather change in the sky over the stadium, and rain pelting the camera on certain days.

If you a baseball fan, or a construction junkie, or just bored at your job, check out the site at http://clarkconstruction.oxblue.com/clarkhuntsmoot/.