HotPads.com, an apartment-search site that launched two years ago, this week opened up to for-sale property listings.
The company, which has an inventory of about 80,000 available rental properties, went live with an initial batch of 200,000 searchable for-sale listings supplied by partners, which include Web site and real estate software providers such as ThreeWide and ListHub.
Matt Corgan, HotPads co-founder and technology director, said in a statement, “We are excited about the for-sale market. We have been helping people find rental housing for two years and are excited by the prospect of helping even more people find their next home.”
HotPads joins a lengthy and growing list of real estate Web sites that feature for-sale property listings.
The site offers map-based searches with stylized representations of homes and rental properties and a sliding tool that allows users to set a search range for home prices and rental costs. The site also features heat maps and demographic information, and allows users to view the location of train and subway stations, public schools and colleges.
HotPads.com co-founder Douglas Pope said the site can accept bulk feeds of for-sale property information from brokers and individual agents, and homeowners can also post property information directly on the site at no charge.
For-sale property information that is posted directly on the site is immediately available to consumers searching the site, and listings supplied by data feeds are updated on a daily basis.
Property listings can be activated for only 32 days at a time, and agents and owners can deactivate property listings at any time. Users who post property listings can choose to reactive property listings at the end of each 32-day period if the properties are still not sold.
