Rental listings besides Craigslist? (Boston, Cambridge: apartments, house, move to)

[Ronswanson]

Does anyone know if almost all apartments in the Cambridge/Somerville/Arlington area show up on Craigslist?

We've been going only by those listings (and some large agents we found on there like Maven and Apartment Rental Experts) and are wondering if we are completely missing other good listing websites/agencies.

[silverbelles]

I'm going to make myself comfortable in this thread because I sure could use another site to find listings in JP. Craigslist is annoying because the realtors keep plugging the same listing 10 times a day, but only change the title slightly so that they won't be flagged for spam. Very frustrating when you're trying to find *new* listings!

I will say that I like Hot Pads, too, but they sometimes have really old listings, so you have to comb through them.

[XeeDee]

PadMapper
Hotpads.com

Try the two above... they're pretty easy to navigate. Most listings on the maps tend to be accurate but you get the occasional bad egg realtor who lists cheap places downtown to get you to click but they are really in Newton or something.

Padmapper was forced to stop scraping Craigslist adds in the last week or two which has made it's listings a little sparse in places.

That said, both are easier to navigate and both pretty good.

There some sites like "Boston Pads" etc which have decent listings but don't seem to be updated VERY regularly.

Hope that's some help.

Having said all that, having gone through this pain a few times now, Craigslist probably still has the biggest set of listings if you can deal with trawling through the spam.

[Ronswanson]

Yeah, Padmapper was an amazing way of cutting spam - multiple listings would get mapped to the same location on the map. Alas, Craigslist stopped supplying data to Padmapper last week..

I actually wrote a small amateur computer program to take say the first 500 search results from Craigslist in a rent range ($1400 - $2300 for me) and go through it and throw out all the duplicate entries by comparing almost identical titles and identical listing ID numbers.

Some duplicates still get through - some devious agents rewrite the title entirely and do not always include a listing ID number in their ad. Even with those problems, I typically find that less than 15 - 20% of results are not spam!!

For example, I just ran my program, retrieving the most recent 200 listings meeting my rent and deleaded criteria - only 19 passed the spam test! I've also been furiously clicking on the 'This is Spam/ repeated listing' button in the ads but to no avail.. if I can write a program, surely Craigslist can block the spamming..

[Bruins_Fan]

The overposting on Craigslist is really out of hand. I always flag them, but they never seem to be removed. I was looking at used cars, and saw the same car posted 3-4 times...very annoying.

[XeeDee]

I would get over the double posting if they could make the location search a bit better.

If I was to search for "Cambridge" for example, results show up from all over, and those actually tagged with Cambridge are often not. It'd be pretty simple to enforce that they must provide the address or at least the cross streets and use that as the location search criteria... listing 10 apartments in Allston and then adding every minor suburb to the footer of your ad gets annoying, I'm not going to move to Belmont if I want a place in Cambridge so why do it?

Also for "private" ads. I really can't stand people who post room shares on the apartments list. There is a seperate listings for that and it really bad manners.


Sorry, rant over

[silverbelles]

I know exactly what you mean, XeeDee. If I'm looking for JP, I only want JP (maybe Mission Hill as well, but not really). I have zero interest in Allston and Brighton, but they always manage to sneak in there because of annoying realtors who add other cities in their listings. I also agree that cross streets should be added because it adds a level of legitimacy to the posting. Also, it's nice to be able to see what street the apt is on and look at the surrounding area/proximity to transit.

[westwind15]

Every time I respond to an ad on CG lately, it's the same response - a guy who tells me he is a missionary who just moved to West Africa, but owns a house in Boston...

[Pear Martini]

^^^^seriously. There have been so many ads in Brookline for 1 bedrooms near Coolidge Corner at $750 or $850...so I tried one.


It was a total scam....the guy told me he has already moved to Ohio and couldn't show me the apartment until I send the rent! I called him and his cell was an LA number and he had a heavy african accent and seemed angry that I called him.


It's bull****...how is anyone supposed to find anything without a realtor these days?

[Cantabridgienne]

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.