Apartment Search 2.0

MyApartmentMap.com is a new mashup that brings a little bit of sanity to the total mind-melter that is the modern urban apartment search. The free service pulls apartment "For rent" posts from Craigslist and plots them on a Google Map. The main interface puts the two side by side for easy browsing:

You can filter your searches by price of rent, number of bedrooms, and the age of the listing. You can also narrow your searches to specific suburbs. There aren't a whole lot of apartments in the service for many of the cities right now. Since MyApartmentMap was originally built in Boston, that city returns the best results. Once you zoom in on a location, you can see the proximity of the local grocery stores and the closest T station (that's Boston's public transit, FYI). One suspects that time will allow creator Ian Reardon to add more functionality. You can keep up to date with developments on Ian's blog.

MyApartmentMap is quite similar to Housing Maps, a site that offers much of the same basic functionality but lacks the additional features and local searches. MyApartmentMap also has some neat additions like City Facts. I found this nugget at the bottom of the page for our favorite step-child:

Oaklanders most broadly refer to their city's terrain as "the flatlands" and "the hills," which up until recent waves of gentrification have also been a reference to Oakland's deep economic divide, with "the hills" being more affluent communities.

Take that, Piedmont.