Craigslist <i>SUCKS</i> due to spam, 1996-era search, misposts, an overlimited posting format, a lack of keyword filtering (I could go on for days on why craigslist sucks. So could you, even if Craig gives us happy feelies) but they're really the only game in the bay area. Rent.com and Apartments.com have been a joke since their inception. Padmapper is alright, but definitely hampered by trying to sharecrop Craigslist without an api.<p>This market seems ripe for innovation and disruption. Before I jump into the game, I figure somebody else, or many other people are trying to build a better apartment search site. So, what's out there?
when i moved to SF i walked around the TL and rang building managers of nicer buildings and asked to see what was available. in Boston the most up-to-date info was not online but in a steno book of a guy in a subbasement in the Fenway that connects to various buildings via utility tunnels, even getting to him required 2 elevator-trips and some stairs, but it really illuminated how things work. in between padmapper, hotpads, trulia, zillow and the exclusive broker-listings and MLS-shared rentals therein, as well as alumni-mailinglists/forums containing for-owner listings and carefully-crafted CL search-bookmarks and working with a couple human brokers it was possible to get a good sense of roughly everything in the market
The problem is to convince a lot of apartment owners to post and update their apartments on your site, especially if you're just starting and have just a few visitors.<p>It's a catch 22 problem, you need a lot of money to gain traffic at the start.<p>Most large building owners just let real estate agents do all this work, which have their own databases that are great quality, but it will cost you a fortune to tap into any of them.