It’s quite easy to get stuck when searching for cool housing sites, but it’s damn hard to find the right tool for the right job. Particularly if you are out of time and don’t want to investigate what every “quick-n-dirty” solution a website has to offer you. To get things done, you need inspiration. You need freshly updated listings and a website that is easy on the eyes. And you need to be able to find these things as quick as possible. Handy references, examples, and reviews are therefore both useful and enjoyable - after all, who can resist gorgeous, professional, elegant and visually appealing lists?
After reviewing literally 100’s of websites, we’ve hand picked 60 of the best. In an overview below you’ll find 60 fresh, elegant, professional and visually stimulating housing applications online, which pay close attention to details and manage to remain simple, user-friendly and nice-looking.
College Housing Search:
Live By Campus - Thank you Jordan Black for telling us about this site.
Really Simple Housing Aids:
Housing Maps - The original Craigslist with Google maps mashup. An excellent visual tool to use when trying to find housing fast. With its quick and easy intuitive interface, I don’t think these guys will ever go away there just to irresistible to users. (A+)
Walk Score - See what’s around your house or investigate a neighborhood before you make the move. Walk Score gives the online housing audience a great tool with excellent technology. Much more to come from these guys. (A+)
San Francisco Craigslist Rental Mashup (B) (Craigslist Maps)
Craigslist Google Map Mashup (B) (Craigslist Maps)
By Owner Port Housing - Ability to sell, rent, and find housing for free. Annoying intro to site. Needs a lot work in my opinion. (D-)
Kexter the Housing Maps emulator - Craigslist and Google base real estate mashup. Utilizes Google maps for search visualization. Looks like this site is an exact blueprint of Housing Maps. (C)
Standard Apartment Search:
Apartment Guide - With the oldest and largest print publication in the United States, Apartment Guide delivers and gives users an easy search tool to find apartments for rent quickly. Where Apartment Guide has major design flaws, they make up for it in quality apartment listings. I highly recommend this site to anyone researching apartment complexes. (A+)
Apartments.com - This is one of the oldest online based apartment search sites. They have not changed their design in ages and the layout is quite cumbersome for users. This site does not focus on quality, but rather quantity; hence the millions of apartments they boast in their database. This comes in second for apartment search online. (B-)
ForRent.com - Another print and online publication that has only been around for the last decade or so. The design needs a lot of work and their advertisements will kill your eyes. Much work and room to go here. (C)
Rent.com - As an eBay company and one of most advertised rental sites online. They require a signup to search their listings and navigating the site is tough at times. The design is pretty good I must say, but there is much room for improvement for this big site. Has anybody ever received that $100 claim reward they advertise on the site? (B)
ApartmentFinder.com - A print and online apartment publication. This website looks like it was xeroxed right out of their apartment magazine. Design and user experience is not great. This site needs lots of work. (D)
Apartment Cost Tools:
Rent O’ Meter - Are you paying too much to rent? Are charging tenants to little? This site claims to give you answers to both of those questions. By using census and median information, this site mashes it all up with Google maps and the result is a nice dashboard graph breakdown. I like this tool a lot myself and will continue to use it for future reference. (A+)
United States Neighborhood Tools:
Rotten Neighbor - place to share info about good or bad neighbors before and after you move.
Street Advisor - Find information about your neighborhood. Site is rather new and lacking overall information. Need some time to mature. Design is great and overall usability is good. Give this one some time to grow. (B-)
International Neighborhood Tools:
Up My Street - Research and find UK neighborhood information about your street and things to do around your block. (B)
Real Estate Trend Tools:
Trulia’s Hindsight Map - Trulia animated map of homes that measures growth in the US through time
Home Price Records - Research real estate investment trends. Uses Google Maps for visualization.
Mobile Phone Housing Tools:
Gumiyo Mobile Housing - The first and only website that connects buyers and sellers by extending the traditional online marketplace to mobile phones. The site is easy and intuitive for mobile phone users. Give it a shot! Thank you for the tip Jef. (A+)
Real Estate Housing Visual Search and Valuation Tools:
New Home Guide -
Realtor - The magna cumma laude of real estate listings. One of the biggest housing sites on the net with one of the biggest listings database available. You gotta register yourself to get any good information. Usability is ok, but much search effort is required to find any useful information. Design is decent 8/10. Overall, this beast is big and bulky and needs to head the gym to get back in shape. (B)
Trulia - Most popular online resource for visual housing search. Highly recommend this site to anyone researching real estate. (A)
Zillow - Another popular real estate research tool. I’ve used this site on multiple occasions and it hasn’t failed me yet. Clean design and user interface. Lots of tools and goodies on this site. (A+)
Redfin - Do-it-yourself find, buy, and sell real estate. Visual maps, easy search. (B+)
Hot Pads - Housing map overlays. Slower site loads on occasion when searching. Interface needs some work. They have the right idea going, but perhaps too much stuff happening on the page. Needs to be simplified. (C+)
Terabitz - Horrible name. Terabitz is the first comprehensive and customizable real estate Web site that is helping consumers make smart decisions before, during, and after the property transaction in ways never before possible. (A-)
Homepages - Ranks #1 for “homepages” in Google. Not a great choice for a name. However, the site is easy to search. visual maps. heavy on advertising. (C)
PropSmart - homes for sale, land for sale, commercial real estate for sale, and apartments for rent. Uses Google maps for visualization. (A-)
Propety Maps - Finally a decent name for a website. Real estate maps by MLS or state, city, zip. Mobile phone enabled. Uses Google maps for visualization. Quick load times. Usability is good. (A+)
Cyber Homes - Database boasts more than 100 million listings. Find median or average housing valuation fast. Amazing layout and design. Everything you’d expect from a big bank like Fidelity. (A+)
Zip Reality - Find homes for sale as well as local real estate agents. Decent database of houses. Need to sign up to get full information. Search process is terrible and needs a lot of work. (D)
Home Locator Application - Utilizes Yahoo map tool. Great interface and real estate application. Usability is excellent and design choice is good. Database of real estate listings seems small in proportion to some other sites out there. Site seems young and needs a bit more time to mature. Overall this site is an excellent choice for major US metros. (A+)
Real Quest - RealQuest determines your needs and shows everything from property details including estimated home value to comps, satellite maps and parcel overlays, foreclosure information. (A)
Domania - The site offers tools to find your homes value. You can also search for real estate. (B+)
Home Smart Reports - Not much to see here. (D)
Electronic Appraiser - This site offers real estate appraisals and customized home sales valuation reports. Premium service. (B-)
Eppraisal - Free home appraisals. The site claims to have over 120 million homes. Overall I think this site has a lot of potential and it’s definitely one to add to your housing hotlist. (A)
Real Estate University
Real Estate ABC - This site has lots of howto’s, guides, and tools for helping you with your real estate questions. Overall this site has lots of good information. (B)
International Real Estate Visual Search:
On One Map - International visual housing map (B)
Housing 1,2,3 - Visual Toronto housing search. Uses Google maps. (C+)
My Hood (Canada) - Canada based housing search with a web 2.0 feel. Nice layout with good researching tools make this site a popular choice for Canadians. (A)
Block Hunter - Nice name for an 80’s video game, huh? Very web 2.0 housing website. This site seems very new and lacks many core necessities for housing search. Let this one grow up a bit. (D)
Properazzi - Enough with the crazy names already! Not too sure on this one folks. The site seems young, but does contain the proper tools for real estate housing research. Usability is moderate and design is 6/10 I’d say. Lot’s of room for improvement here. (C+)
Apartment Visual Search:
My Apartment Map - (Boston, New York, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, Dallas, San Francisco, Atlanta, Seattle, Washington DC, Toronto) (B)
My New Place - Ok maps feature and layout. Homepage is kind of poor and needs some help. Requires sign up to research apartments. Uses Google maps for visualization. (C)
United States Local Specific Housing Search:
Street Easy - New York City real estate visual search.
Estately - Seattle based real estate, MLS search engine. Uses Google maps. Design and layout is good. Listings seem to be updated frequently. Overall a nice site for Seattle residents looking for housing. (A)
Movoto - Dr Movoto is back with another epic thriller…j/k. This one is a California based housing search widget. Find homes for sale in Northern and Southern California. Great website with excellent web 2.0 feel to it. Large California database that’s updated regularly. Utilizes Google maps for visual search. However, you need to register to get more information on any real estate properties. (B+)
International Local Specific Housing Search
Nestoria - Ahhh welcome to the fantasy world of Nestoria where all your dreams come true. UK based property search engine (A+)
US Real Estate Classifieds:
Edgeio - Web 2.0 sleek local real estate classifieds. (A)
Oodle Real Estate Classifieds - Oodle has been around for a while now in housing. Much to improve upon on this real estate category, but good properties and information nonetheless. (A-)
US Housing Rental Classifieds:
Oodle Apartment Classifieds - Oodle delivers apartments and housing rentals in an easy to use interface. Their listings need quite a bit of improvement, but this category is headed in the right direction. (B+)
US and International Housing Classifieds:
Kijiji - Try saying that name 10x fast. Another eBay owned housing classified website. Not too much to improve upon here. These guys are doing a good job. (A-)
Median Home Prices:
Housing Tracker - Exactly what the name says. Track housing information by median home prices. (B)
Rent Slicer - Find median information on neighborhood quickly. Uses Google maps for visualization. Advertising heavy. Now only if they could actually slice the mortgages or rent dues we pay every month. (C)
National City - Maps and graphs that show housing data in America by median price and valuation. Overall, a nice tool to use for finding top level median housing information. (B)
U.S. Government Housing, Census Information, and Visual Maps:
HUD (GOV) (A)
Fact Finder (GOV) (A)
City Data (A+)
Data Place (A)
Zip Skinny - Get the skinny on your zip code fast. Census data and information search by ZIP code. (A-)
Zip code visual outliner - Awesome visual zip code finder that outlines results over visual Google map. (A+)
Portland Maps - Portland, Oregon based median housing search widget. Good information for local residents, but lacks usability and the design is a bit nasty. This is a result of Portland’s tax dollars at work. (C-)
Los Angeles Life (LALife) - Very cool housing map for Los Angeles, California residents. Simple design, layout, and user experience. Utilizes Google maps for visualization and imagery. Overall this site has good information and uses a search by address, city, zip, or neighborhood search tool. (A)
Foreclosure Maps and Listings:
Property Shark - (B)
Foreclosure Radar - Premium California foreclosure site that requires a membership. Good information and software for real estate foreclosures. With a price tag of $449.95 annually, you won’t find me near this site…I’ll leave that to the professional real estate idiots. (C)
RealtyTrac - Over 1 million properties that are updated daily. Search for pre-foreclosure, bank foreclosures, for sale by owner (FSBO), foreclosed homes via auction, new homes and MLS listings. Overall, this is a great site for foreclosures. (A-)
Top City Lists:
Top City Lists (Dugg) - anything you could ever imagine about city popularity in the United States. Great information. (A+)
Best Places to Live in the United States - find best places to live in the United States (B+)
Top Sex Offender Housing Tools:
Sex Offender Search - Free sex offender search with good visual search tool. (B+)
Family Watchdog - This is the most popular sex offender site on the net. Recommended by Oprah and laughed about in Dane Cooks latest cd…sorry had to add that one in there. (A)
National Alert Registry - Need to pay to see results. Who wants that? (D)
What are some of your favorite housing websites?
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don’t forget about Gumiyo.com - the only mobile phone real estate technology
Ah yes, thank you Jef. I will add it to the list.
my son is moving to Phoenix so this information is very useful - PJ
Great to hear PJ! I’m glad this list could be of some help to you.
hubbuzz.com is a newbie to the apartment search world…useful and relevant neighborhood info too!
hi - you didnt list http://www.superhomerentals.com but thats ok as one of the only housing listing companies on the web that allows section 8 housing to be listed also any one can list homes on the website for sale or rent the company is in jacksonville fl but would love to be in all markets
Wow - great job compiling all this great info. Check out a new mashup that I developed for vacation and short term furnished rentals - http://www.furnishedhomes.com We are in public beta and just getting rolling. You might also be interested in the auto suggest features to find addresses, landmarks, attractions, hospitals, airports and more to find furnished rentals. Keep up the good work!
Another interesting site to note is http://www.housingbymap.com
This is a great mash-up to find houses for sale , rental, and find roommates…
Map ads are free…
-Atilla
http://www.LiveByCampus.com is one of the best university housing resources I have found and used.
@Jordan - Thanks for the tip! We’ll add it to the list.
Nice list. I’ll have to go through these one by one.
I find Redfin to be another great site for the buy/sell side.
Have a look at http://sfbay.cribq.com for Craigslist rentals. I created it to solve my own problems searching for housing with Craigslist.
Thanks Alex. Housingmaps is nice, but CribQ was much more up to date with the listings. Definitely another A+ site.
Very cool that you can zoom into to just see the listings in a neighborhood. Also the ability to hotlist instead of bookmarking the Craiglist pages is a nice touch.
During college def used a couple of the collede sites that are listed but finding a place was the least of my probs. My biggest problem was packing and moving in. My biggest money saver has been a green company called http://www.UsedCardboardBoxes.com <—- This company has made my life CAKE! They sell moving/shipping boxes that come with all the packing supplies that I needed plus they always ship for FREE!
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