
Find apartments by commute times - DanielRibeiro
http://www.walkscore.com/apartments/
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davidcuddeback
Well done. I hacked together something similar about a year ago when I moved
to San Francisco, because I needed a place within walking distance to my work,
within walking distance to BART (for my girlfriend's commute), and that allows
cats [1]. It helped me find the perfect place.

It's cool to see that there is now a general-purpose tool like the one that I
made last year. I'll definitely use it next time I move. A couple things about
this tool weren't obvious to me on my first experience:

1) I didn't know what a "walk score" was. I looked briefly for an explanation
on the site, but didn't find one. At first I thought higher was worse, as if
it were a measure of how far you had to walk to get to work. But by playing
around on the site for a bit, it seems like higher is better, and it seems to
be a measure of how accessible shops and necessities are by walking out your
front door (that alone is really cool). My apartment scores a 92.

2) One implication of not understanding the "walk score" was that I thought
the walk score filter was to limit the search results by how long your commute
was. When I input my work address, my apartment wasn't within the search
radius, so I actually wanted to _expand_ the search radius. (Walking 2 miles
to work everyday is a nice way to get some exercise, but my commute is only 10
minutes if I decide to bike.) It took me a minute to notice the "time" filter
at the top of the page.

3) Lastly, I didn't see how to filter by whether a place allows dogs or cats,
but then I found that you can expand the filter box to filter by pets, price,
and bedrooms. Perfect.

Now that I've figured out those three issues, the site is easy to use and I
look forward to using it next time I move. It makes the tool that I hacked
together for this purpose obsolete.

[1] <https://github.com/dcuddeback/apartment-scrape>

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jprobert
Padmapper already does this and does it well

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jaredsohn
Yes, Padmapper does this general kind of thing but it doesn't offer the
ability to limit a search based on commute times (which is the title of the
post.)

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ericd
It doesn't filter by them, but it does overlay boundaries for commute time
(open filters, then Super Secret Advanced Features).

I definitely need to add public transit, though.

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jaredsohn
I was corrected in another post and neglected to update this one. I just
couldn't see the options for some reason (perhaps because they were super
secret :)).

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ericd
Haha yeah, maybe I should make them less of a secret via a redesign.

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davidandgoliath
<http://padmapper.com> is a much better system than this & it also includes
the walkscore of an area. It's a site that maps out apartments from craigslist
& other sources on a google map.

Have used it to find my last ~7 apartments/houses.

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jaredsohn
I like how this site offers a feature where you tell it how long of a mass
transit commute is acceptable and it shows you those places. I don't think
padmapper offers that.

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jasonlotito
Yes, it does. That's what he was saying. Padmapper does this, with multiple
settings in the search as well.

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jaredsohn
No, it doesn't although it does have an option to show a walk score (which you
might be thinking of). Note that a "walk score" is different than commute
time: a walk score is how generally walkable an area is for everyone while a
commute time is dependent on another location.

Can you tell me where one can find the option to limit matches based on mass
transit distance from some location? (In general, when you say "yes it does"
offer some feature, it would be helpful to describe where in the UI it can be
accessed, otherwise we'll have a long "yes it does", "no it doesn't"
conversation. The burden of proof is on the person claiming something exists
rather than the one claiming it does not. :))

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mjdwitt
You can find what I believe he is talking about buried in the last level of
padmapper's menus along with it's crime and walkscore overlays. It's mostly
just a text box where you type some number of minutes and a location and it
highlights the area you can reach by walking from the provided location for
the given number of minutes, following roads and paths on google maps.

~~~
jaredsohn
Thanks, I think that is why he talked about multiple settings.

I actually missed that when I looked at it previous times. :)

But still it only allows walking and driving and not mass transit so my first
point in the thread still stands.

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jfb
I. LOVE. THIS.

That is all.

 _EDIT_ : I'm looking to move across the bay, and this has brought some areas
of Oakland to my attention that I had previously neglected. Too, it's a cool
hack. So -- useful, and "I wish I'd thought of it". Killer combo.

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ebaysucks
This is a great idea.

I once read a lesswrong.com article on how commute times are one of the most
underrated aspects in picking a place to live.

Of course, this also means you will have some teaching to do.

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kemiller
For those of us chained down by mortgage: how about job listings within n
minutes of my house?

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dennyferra
A great idea. I would even be curious to see a heatmap of job availability in
my area and then get travel time as I looked through them.

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Terretta
Love the walkability score concept. Current digs get a score of 92, but that
isn't obvious to folks that don't know the area so this did very well to
figure that out. Falls down just a little on commuter trains, which don't seem
to get a bonus versus buses, though in real life, the trains are faster,
easier, and less tiresome.

However, the car commute times from a certain address seem computed oddly.

Picking, for example, 199 Elm Street, New Canaan, CT, shows 10 minute drives
from what it considers main roads (because they have route numbers?) while not
revealing the parallel side roads which actually have much lower times thanks
to no traffic lights or stop signs. I've checked a number of areas on both
coasts, and the same seems to be true: car commute times are based on main
routes, not low traffic alternate routes. (The mountain roads NW of LA instead
of the interstate are another example.)

That said, this is fantastic, and since the map is shown, you can probably
eyeball the alternate routes to find a perfect low hassle drive.

Will be recommending this to my realtor friends working in highly walkable
areas to help show the benefits.

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SandB0x
For this but without the apartment bit: <http://www.mapnificent.net/>

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cwp
Neat! I love how it can figure out what (possibly discontiguous) areas give
the required commute time by transit. Doesn't seem to have any apartments,
though.

EDIT: It finds apartments in New York; maybe it just doesn't work in Canada.
Which is odd, given Craigslist works fine in Canada and it figures out commute
times in Canada.

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Aloisius
Wow, that is very cool. I'm totally going to recommend it to new employees who
are looking for apartments.

It seems to correctly pick up pockets in San Francisco where you can take BART
from and not show you things closer to your destination, but out of reach of
mass transit options.

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zackadams
This is a much needed and well implemented tool for apartment searchers, well
done! I live in Atlanta and have always considered commute time when looking
for a home and searching for jobs. I've looked for tools like this for years
and haven't found anything that comes close.

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philfreo
YES!!! I was literally searching everywhere for this only 1 week ago and
determined that there was nothing good out there.

Relevant: <http://youtu.be/zJOS0sV2a24?t=4m>

Now, if only there was a way to enter 2 addresses (for spouses/roommates) and
have it give you the places with the best cumulative commute times. EDIT: Just
saw Mapnificent does this!

Would also love to see this fully integrated into <http://padmapper.com>.

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mapgrep
This app is pulling data from Craigslist. But how? There is no API and the
company is ruthless about going after scrapers. Search for 'Atwood' here
[http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/17-09/ff_...](http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/magazine/17-09/ff_craigslist?currentPage=all)

This is a fantastic idea, I just wonder how sustainable it is.

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jaredsohn
Padmapper has been doing the same for awhile. From a technical standpoint, you
can get data easily via RSS.

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pivo
It seems like it doesn't know that you can walk across bridges. I tried it
with my work address "1 Main St, Cambridge MA" and it showed me walkable
apartments in Cambridge only, even though there were closer apartments just
across the Longfellow bridge in Boston.

When I switched to any of the other options it showed me Boston places.

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FrojoS
This is a great idea but it doesn't seem to work well yet. I tried 'mass av 77
cambridge ma' (MIT) and apartments within 5 min walking distance from that
address where supposed to take 14 mins according _Walkscore_. Also, it doesn't
make sense to me to show a transit commute for such apartments.

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jaredsohn
>Also, it doesn't make sense to me to show a transit commute for such
apartments.

Then don't. You can tell it to look at walking, biking, car, or mass transit.

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FrojoS
Well obviously I used that option. My point it shouldn't show a transit option
as default for a workplace that is closer than the train/bus station.

~~~
jaredsohn
Good point. Other sites such as Google maps mass transit search will show
walking results instead of mass transit results in such situations.

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perssontm
This is great, we thought about something similar when finding a new office.
The middle-point between 3 coworkers, with least commutetime for everyone.

We did find something in the end, but it was a really manual process.

Rebranding it and doing an new-office-locator might work as well. :)

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bendmorris
This is awesome. It would be nice if you could choose to display real estate
for sale as well.

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rmk
Amazing site. Great effort!!

I had a bug to report: When I move the slider on the 'number of bedrooms' and
make it '1', I cannot change it (to '2', say). I am using chrome 14.0.835.186.

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mopatches
Very cool! Can you add the ability to filter by price range too?

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armandososa
It's there. Expand the filters box on the lower left corner. Also filter by #
of bedrooms

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niels_olson
Love this. I've been trying to get my wife to move downtown for a while, this
actually shows there are units in our market available. Thank you so much!

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clistctrl
This is awesome!

It's a great MVP, Would love to see more break down options (such as pets)

