by Osman Parvez

I took a few minutes to revisit Housing Maps today and was impressed by how this site has continued to develop. The recently added filter feature is a big step forward.

If you are looking to buy or rent a home, give Housing Maps a whirl. The site is a mashup, combining data from Craigslist and Google Maps to create a very useful (and free!) service for house hunters.

The real difference is the visual display of information. You see all the homes on the map that match your criteria. If you click on the list of homes that are generated on the right, the map automatically recenters. If you click on a pushpin, you get that particular listing’s information. As with other Google Maps, it also gives you the option to switch to Satellite or Hybrid mode. Google Maps continues to set the standard, in my opinion, one of the reason we use it on in the listings from our site.

As I mentioned last time I looked at Housing Maps, the service is more useful if you’re looking for rentals than if you’re looking to buy. Many agent websites, including my own, have mapping options and contain the full spectrum of available listings (versus only the inventory on Craigslist).

If I were looking to rent an apartment in an unfamiliar city, Housing Maps would be my first stop. Their selection of cities at the moment is limited, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it grow in the near future.

If you’re looking for Boulder by the way, it’s not there. The data is aggregated under Denver. Simply choose Denver from the list of available cities and then drag the map toward the Northwest to see Boulder.

It seems to me that Craigslist and Google should get behind Housing Maps and inject some serious liquidity into this project. It’s a winner.

Image:Sparky

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