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Ask HN: Would this make finding a new place suck less?

6 points by shk88 ↗ HN
While searching for a new place to stay, I found myself wishing for a way to quickly determine best place to live between where my roommate and I work. I'm thinking of building an app that would take into consideration work locations for household members, as well as other important factors specified by the user (schools, medical facilities and whatnot). The app would determine the ideal location(s) to search. Any thoughts on the idea? Anyone else have the need for something like this?

14 comments

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hugh3
As a standalone app, difficult. People would use it so rarely that you'd never build up much momentum.

As a feature for existing real estate sites, though, it could be great.

veyron
It's good for renters though, and there's a vibrant rental market in NYC (with forced yearly turnover)
shk88
Thats a good point. Is the forced turnover simply due to leases ending and people moving out or is there some sort of city regulation at play?
veyron
Its a few things:

1) people's tastes change, and as they age they may prefer other regions (ie upper east side).

2) lots of people move out of the city when they want to start a family. some think that suburbs are much nicer for raising kids (no need to worry about little kids going to school on the subway, etc)

3) as people become more affluent, they can move from less expensive areas (i.e. some neighborhoods in brooklyn) to more expensive areas. A lot of my friends started in greenpoint or park slope (in brooklyn) and moved into manhattan after a few years.

There's no regulation per se, but the city is so large and composed of so many small neighborhoods. Some of these are better suited for younger crowds and others cater to older crowds.

shk88
I was sort of thinking the same thing myself. I was hoping one of the housing search sites would have an API/affiliate program I could utilize to list places for rent. Unfortunately this isn't the case. I'll have to think this one out a bit more to figure out if it's feasible.
veyron
It's not clear if an iphone or android app would be needed fo such a purpose. An html5 touch-accelerated page would be sufficient.

You know, NYC would be a nice place to start. You have the subway map anyway so you could reasonably estimate where people could live subject to commute constraints and actually see where the critical resources are located. The real innovation here would be in a nice UI -- using craigslist or going with a broker are pains in the arse.

shk88
I would start out with just a standalone web app since I don't have much experience with android/iOS. I'll use that as a proving ground to see what I can come up with.

Starting with NYC is a great idea. It would pose more challenges than smaller cities and rural areas, but if I can get it to work for NYC, everywhere else should be relatively easy.

staunch
Laying listings on a map more than solves this problem. Padmapper is great.

The biggest flaw with Padmapper is that so many places don't list their address, so they can't be mapped. Solve that and you're way more useful.

shk88
I had never seen Padmapper before. It certainly solves the some of the issues I have been having. It doesn't solve the problem of optimizing the location for commute times, etc. But, it is far more intuitive than finding a listing and then plugging its address into google maps.
HedgeMage
I'd adore a Google Earth overlay that showed rentals and/or homes for sale (preferably grabbed according to my own criteria) so that I can use things like drive time to important locations, school boundaries, etc. to find places I'd like to live.

The mapping that existing real estate and rental listing sites use are frustrating to me because searching by location is clunky -- by city or zip code or even distance as the bird flies is too vague. I want to make sure I don't spend my life commuting, that going to our dojo isn't a prohibitively long trip, that I like the school my child would be in, and that there's a nearby grocery store or grocery delivery that suits my dietary restrictions.

I want to be able to overlay whatever data is important to me -- elementary school boundaries, grocery stores or delivery areas, traffic patterns, etc -- on my home search.

I want to be able to pick a few locations and specify maximum drive times for each, then find places in the overlap (bonus points if I can input my schedule so typical traffic patterns are considered).

I have no idea how you'd make money off of it, though. :/

ch00ey
Have you taken a look at Walk Score (http://www.walkscore.com/)? Is it something that comes along the lines of what you we're thinking, except a bit more personalized with taking into consideration your workplace?
shk88
This is almost exactly what I was thinking, but in reverse. Instead of plugging in your address, you would plug in the places you frequently visit (work, school, etc.) and it would spit out the ideal locations to live.
pasbesoin
Accurate assessment (I guess I can't use the word "guarantee") of peace and quiet. I don't know how you, from your position, can achieve this.
N8ynite
I would love to see an App like this. When my wife and I moved to Denver I got an old fashioned dead tree map out and put a pin where she worked and a pin where I worked. I then took a string that would be the longest commute that my wife would accept and did the same for myself. We then searched for apartments in that location. It was a good system but it didn't help us find the apartment we ultimatley choose. I didn't take in to consideration a major highway and the effect that would have on the commute time. An App that had an estimated drive time function would be great. Then create profiles for each person and the app could logarithmically show areas that would have least amount of commute for both parties. Incorporate a Apartment, Rental (house/condo), and real estate finder and you got yourself a killer App for people moving. Lots of marketing synergy and in App ad/purchasing possibilities too.