hotpads.com Takes Vacation Listings

hotpads.com is a map-based real estate search engine which lists homes for sale, apartments, condos, and rental houses.

The US based property search engine has recently added a “vacation” tab to its site, which lets users search for around 20,000 vacation home rentals across the country.

TechCrunch reported the news, saying that search results can be sorted by price and availability, which show up when you hover your mouse over any given house icon.

hotpads.com was launched in November 2005 by three college roommates from the University of Notre Dame. Initially it covered rentals only, but in November 2007 added for sale listings.

It has since grown to include around 3 million homes for sale and more than 300,000 rental listings.

hotpads.com is free-to-use and free-to-list and also features an innovative Buy vs. Rent search feature, where users can search homes to rent or purchase at the same time and compare them based on monthly costs.

Its entry into the vacation rentals market places it as a competitor – albeit a rather small one – to owner listed vacation rental website ravant.com and homeaway.com, which is one of the leaders with over 124,000 vacation rental properties listed.

1. Interview with Douglas Pope – hotpads.com

   propertyportalwatch.com spoke to hotpads.com co-founder Douglas Pope about the history and future of the website. ...

2. Vacation Rentals Arrive on Facebook

   secondporch.com allows vacation rental property owners to list their homes on Facebook for free and control who sees their listings....

3. PC Mag Honours trulia.com, hotpads.com

   PC Mag has named US property search engine trulia.com and map-based real estate search engine hotpads.com in its top 100 websites of 2009 list. ...

4. Free Listings and Data at rentbits.com

   US rental property search engine rentbits.com has just tweaked its advertising model, allowing users to list rental properties for free on Google Base, oodle.com, vast.com and hotpads.com. rentbits.com is also offering two paid packages for advertisers: a US$69.95 per month “gold” package to post listings to over 40 rental websites, and a $129.95 per month “platinum” package to post to over 100 websites. Both packages include free email and phone tracking. rentbits.com includes rentals.com, homes.com, rentalhomesplus.com and rentalhouses.com as examples of the websites that will pick up these listings....

5. Android Search at hotpads.com

   hotpads.com, a map-based real estate search engine for the US, has just released a mobile search application for Android phones. Using the application, home hunters can find nearby properties, browse listings, contact agents, and get driving and walking directions. ...