netzanette via Flickr

Congratulations on your little bundle of joy! I’m not talking about a human baby, but your meowing, furry kitty.  Your cat makes a wonderful pet and is a great companion, but he can also be an evil genius when it comes to knowing how to destroy your apartment.  And since almost 38%* of the apartments in the US allow cats, there are lots of you out there that should read on!

Scratching I personally think that scratching is the most destructive thing that a cat can do, and some cats are very picky about what they want to scratch. I am also firmly against declawing your cat, for which you can read the reasons here. My cat, Calvin, who just turned one year old, prefers upholstered furniture, but does not particularly care for carpeted cat scratchers. So to save the sofa, I provide him with a cardboard scratching board and he loves to scratch that. I also have nail trimmers for him that I use to regularly trim his nails. I have been doing this since he was a kitten, so he tolerates it. One way that you can deter scratching in certain places is to purchase sticky strips and put them where you don’t want your cat to scratch. Cats don’t like their paws touching sticky things.

Chewing Something else Calvin loves to do is to chew on electric cords and cables. He also loves to chew on the Christmas tree when it is up, the blinds, and the list goes on. I don’t have any plants in my apartment; but if I did, I’m sure that he’d be chewing on those, too. (Please make sure you don’t have any poisonous plants in your home! Check out these poison control tips from the ASPCA). His chewing is very frustrating for me and dangerous for him. Seeing as I don’t want him to end up like Aunt Bethany’s cat on Christmas Vacation, I investigated ways to prevent this behavior.

by darthdowney via Flickr

Cats do not like bitter tasting things and cats do not like citrus. What I did was purchase a bottle of bitter spray at the pet store and sprayed everything Calvin chewed on with this stuff. Let me tell you, the stuff tastes terrible (I accidentally got some on my hands). It also helped a lot; he does not chew on cords anymore. I have also been successful with preventing this by providing toys he can chew on instead. One thing that can also help is to grow some pet grass from oats or wheat for your kitty to chew on.

Potty Breaks Sometimes cats don’t use their litter boxes as they should. I am thankful enough to not have this problem with my cat. However some male cats spray, and other cats sometimes go where they please. The easiest way to prevent spraying is to get your male cat neutered. While you’re at it, get your female cats spayed. There is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t, and you can read more about spaying and neutering your pets here. Make sure that you regularly clean out your cat’s litter box as well and use unscented litter. If you have multiple cats, you’re probably going to have to get multiple litter boxes as they are territorial creatures and won’t enjoy sharing their private space. If you find that there is no obvious reason as to why your cat isn’t using the litter box properly, or just starts this behavior, I recommend taking your cat to the vet to rule out any sort of health issue.

Shedding I cannot emphasize this enough: brush your cat. Brush him until you think that you can brush no more. He will love it and you’ll be getting excess fur off of him. There are tons of nice brushes out there, and I have found that wire bristles work the best for me. Regular brushing also helps prevent hairballs, which is also a plus. Calvin has long fur and brushing prevents mats. If you do find that your cat’s fur is matted, be very careful if you choose to cut the mat out, as cat’s skin is very delicate and is easy to cut. There are also mat-removing combs available to use, which is safer than cutting.

Meet Calvin!

Boredom A bored kitty is a destructive kitty. Provide your cat with fun toys to play with. I have found that toys that dangle and small catnip mice are favorites for Calvin. This is one of Calvin’s favorite toys ever, and it is under $3. Also make sure that you cat can look out the window. If you have high windowsills, consider buying a cat perch for windows so they have a place to sit and look out. For extreme fun, take your cat outside. I don’t recommend letting your cat out to run free if you live in town or on a busy street. I do recommend using a cat leash, and yes I know you don’t want to be “that person” who walks their cat, but it provides them with exercise and you don’t have to go farther than your yard.

I hope that these tips help you and make your kitty less destructive in your apartment! Let me know if you have any other suggestions or if any of these tips worked for you!

*according to the data from our PlaceofMine search engine

So you have a problem. You have a less-than spacious room that is in desperate need of something, but you can’t figure out what that magic bullet would be to fix it. “If only this room was bigger,” you think. Well, stop wishing and try these tips to trick your eyes and make your room appear larger than it really is. I’ll start with the cheapest fixes and end with the most expensive and drastic changes.

Purge – The first thing you want to do is to make any room look larger is to remove all excess clutter. This includes removing excess from the floor, tables, bookshelves, and anywhere else where you see it accumulating. Check out our spring cleaning blogs for more detailed information on purging and storing items. Spring Cleaning: Kitchen, Bedroom, Bathroom, Living Room, Closet.

Lighting – Be bright when it comes to light! Start by letting as much natural light come into your room as possible. Draw back your curtains if they are heavy or consider investing in more sheer curtains if you prefer to leave them closed. If you have limited natural light available, take advantage of lamps. These can include table lamps, floor lamps, and even track lighting if you are able to install it easily.

The Walls – What you do or don’t have on your walls can make or break the overall feel and appearance of your room. When it comes to your walls, you don’t want it to appear busy. A busy wall can take on many forms. It can be a wall with many small pictures, large scale abstract art with lots of lines and colors, shelves that include too many knick-knacks, etc. To prevent this, choose fewer, larger pictures to hang up and make sure that the pictures don’t have a lot going on in them. It is fine to include some smaller pictures, but the key is to not go overboard with too many. Also consider hanging up a large, decorative mirror where it can catch light or reflect the outdoors. Mirrors help create the illusion of depth in a room.

Color – The color you choose for your walls can either make or break how large and open your room feels. For those of you who are able to paint your walls, choose bright colors and neutral colors to paint with. These bright colors are able to reflect light better and create the appearance of depth. If you have wall moldings and trim, paint it in a lighter color than your walls to add even more depth. For those of you who happen to have wall paper, stay away from small prints! These will make your room look smaller than it is. For more information on how colors portray different moods, check out my earlier blog.

Furniture – Strategy and an overall vision is key when you are either figuring out what furniture you want to purchase or when rearranging your existing furniture. Start by removing excess furniture from the room, as this will automatically make the room look larger. Then be smart when choosing the right sized furniture for the space available; a sectional sofa will look gigantic in a small room whereas a loveseat will not. With your larger pieces of furniture, make sure that they are not blocking pathways in the room and that they are up against the wall or set at a slight diagonal to maximize floor space. Try to pick multipurpose furniture as well. This could be finding a coffee table that has storage drawers in it, using a table that can be extended by adding leaves to it, or using end tables that have a small cabinet or drawers in them. One last thing to consider is to choose furniture that has legs, rather than sitting flush to the floor. This allows light to shine under the furniture and gives it an airy feel.

There you have it; a more spacious looking room! Stay tuned for more tips and tricks from us to make your place more awesome!

With spring now in full force and March now past, the first quarter of 2012 is now over. To keep an eye on rental trends, as with 3rd and 4th quarter 2011, we have studied rent prices from all over the country on a state and city basis. On a national level, there was a 2.20% increase in rent prices during Quarter 1 (Q1) of 2012 in comparison to Q1 of 2011. To eliminate seasonality in the prices, we use the same quarter from different years, rather than comparing to last quarter. In other words, we’re comparing 2012’s Q1 with 2011’s Q1, rather than last quarter, 2011 Q4 when we analyze city and state rental trends. Since starting our quarterly reporting in Q3 of 2011, we have seen 3 straight quarters of increases in rent. Q3 2011 had a 2.47% increase, Q4 2011 a 1.25% increase, and now a 2.20% increase in Q1 of 2012. This has shown a very steady and consistent increase in rent on a national basis.

Using our database of available apartments from all over the United States, we are able to determine rental trends. What this means is we crawl and gather data from thousands of websites and put available apartment listings on our site. So the rental prices we use for our data are only for apartments you could have actually gone out and rented during that month.

When looking at the nation as a whole, a majority of states had an increase in rent this quarter. In fact, only 12 states had decreases in rent over the first quarter. For you math majors out there, that leaves 38 states that had increases in rent since the start of the year. The map below shows what states had increases and which had decreases. Red means an increase of over 5%, orange means an increase of less than 5%, and green means a decrease in rent.

As stated above, we also looked at each state individually. From those statistics we looked to see which states had the largest increases and decreases in rent prices over the last quarter.

States with the largest decreases:

States with the largest increases:

We also wanted to look at rents on a city basis, and just as with last quarter the top 10 populated cities in the US all had increases in rent in comparison to last year’s Q1. San Antonio, TX and Chicago, IL both had increases of over 10%, while Philadelphia had the lowest increase at 1.17%. The rest of the cities are in the chart below.

We report rental trends every quarter, so as users you can see what the trends are like in your city. Since we only use available apartments, we are monitoring the average rent for apartments you could have gone out and rented in that given month or quarter. With this information you can see when rents are on the rise or decline in your city so you know whether you should rent now before prices go up more or if prices are dropping and waiting could get you a better deal. As always, if you have any questions about rental trends in your city or state let us know!

Damage from the Pratt City, AL tornado April 27, 2011

Have you been enjoying the ridiculously warm spring weather? I certainly have. However, all that sun and warmth comes at a price. As you can see by this graph from the National Climatic Data Center, the majority of tornadoes occur between April, May, and June, just in time to ruin your spring. However, tornadoes aren’t the only disaster that can damage your apartment, other natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes also cause millions of dollars in damage every year. Even though natural disasters cause huge property losses, nothing can price the loss of life. For that reason, we want to give you an overview as to what you should do in case you wind up in a hurricane, earthquake, or tornado.

Tornadoes and Hurricanes

Preparing for tornadoes and hurricanes is very similar, but hurricanes give you more warning before affecting your neighborhood. As for tornados, and other disasters that happen suddenly, the National Weather Service will issue a “watch,” which means conditions are favorable for the event happening in your area. However, if they issue a “warning,” this means the tornado or hurricane has been spotted or is currently taking place, so take cover immediately.

The first thing you need to do is designate an area to be your safe place. If you are in a high-rise apartment, designate a windowless room on the lowest floor possible. Basements and underground parking garages are good choices. Also designate a second spot within your own apartment in case you don’t have time to get to a lower level. When picking your safe spot make sure it is as centrally located as possible and has the least amount of windows possible. Interior hallways, closets, and bathrooms are excellent choices.

One other thing that I would highly recommend is purchasing a weather radio. Many storm fatalities occur at night when people are sleeping and do not hear the storm. I have personally been in a tornado where my family was awakened at night by the weather radio and we were able to make it to our basement before the tornado damaged our house.

Now that you have designated a spot to take shelter in, you should prepare a disaster kit to use during the storm.

Your kit should include:
- Battery powered radio with extra batteries
- Flashlight with extra batteries
- Nonperishable food
- Bottled water
- First aid kit
- Extra cash or a credit card
- ID
- Extra keys to car, home, etc.
- List of phone numbers and places you could go after the storm
- Other possible needs depending on your situation that include baby supplies (formula, diapers, etc.), prescription medication, glasses, walking aids, etc
- Food and supplies for any pets you have

After the storm has passed, do not forget to check for fallen power lines or other objects such as tree limbs and debris that could fall and harm you. Sometimes the storm being over doesn’t necessarily mean that harm is out of the way.

There is a lot of controversy about what to do if you are caught in a car during a tornado. Some will tell you to try and get out of the way of the tornado, and others will tell you to get to a low lying ditch and find cover there. The one myth I would like to bust is DO NOT get under an overpass. Many people die trying to get under the overpass and are either sucked away through the wind tunnel or the overpass can collapse.

On whether or not you should get out of the way of the tornado or get in a ditch, Weather.com has a great article that discusses the positives and negatives of each option here.

Earthquakes

Unlike a tornado or hurricane, earthquakes come without warning, which makes designating a safe spot wishful thinking. Do not try and escape the building when an earthquake starts, as this could just result in you getting injured by falling objects. What you need to do is know what type of place to look for when the earthquake begins. Try and immediately find a sturdy piece of furniture that you can take cover under and hold on to the furniture, bracing yourself. If you are not near any sturdy furniture, try and make your way to an inside corner of the building and cover your face and head with your arms.

Just because an earthquake occurs without warning doesn’t mean there is nothing you can do to prepare yourself beforehand. Just as with a tornado or hurricane, a disaster kit can help make your situation after the disaster a lot easier. Your hurricane and/or tornado disaster kit that you have can easily double as your disaster kit for earthquakes. Make sure you know where your disaster kit is located so after the earthquake you can retrieve it and use any items that are needed, and that you periodically check expiration dates for items within it. Don’t try and make a run for your disaster kit during the earthquake, but wait until the shaking has stopped and then you can leave where you have taken cover.

Natural disasters are something that we are all at risk for. Having a plan, a disaster kit, and safe spot(s) can not only help save you some stress but also save your life.

Believe Creative via Flickr

Does your state have a Springfield? Mine does and it happens to be the capitol. There is also a Springfield, Missouri; Springfield, Massachusetts; and there’s at least five Springfields in Wisconsin alone. I found the thought of there being so many Springfields so amusing, that I decided to delve into the deeps of the web to discover the most interesting tidbits about select Springfields. So head down to the Kwik-E-Mart, grab a Squishee, and get ready to put the Spring in Springfield!

I’m going to start our tour of Springfields in good old Springfield, Illinois. Springfield is the capitol of Illinois and has tons of fun things to do around town if you like Abraham Lincoln. And who doesn’t like Abraham Lincoln? Springfield is actually the third Illinois State Capitol, being preceded by Kaskaskia and Vandalia, and I am lucky enough to have visited all three. Springfield is home to about 113,000 people, 15 museums, and Abraham Lincoln. If you didn’t know, Abraham Lincoln is kind of a big deal in Springfield. You can tour two museums devoted to Him, you can tour his home, see his tomb, and wear around top hats and beards. If you decide to visit you’re going to get hungry. I would suggest hitting up Cozy Dogs for lunch and trying a place that serves up horseshoes for dinner. If you haven’t heard of horseshoes, they are a type of open faced sandwich that originated in Springfield. Think cheese sauce on top of fries on top of a burger. If you then decide you love Springfield so much that you want to live there, you are in luck! Average rent for one, two, and three bedroom apartments are all under $1,000. However, you won’t be able to live on Evergreen Terrace next to Homer, as this street doesn’t exist in Springfield, IL.

Marshall Astor via Flickr

Show me Springfield, Missouri! This Springfield happens to be the most populous Springfield in the United States with approximately 160,000 happy Springfielders residing within its borders. If you want to visit them, be ready for some sweet outdoor action. You won’t be able to jump the Springfield Gorge or anything, but there are tons of other cool outdoor things to do. If bike riding is your thing, you can check out the Ozark Greenway, a network of bike trails. There are also wineries and distilleries to visit, you can watch the Springfield Cardinals play some ball, and my personal favorite, shop your brains out at the huge Bass Pro Shops headquarters. If you are remotely interested in any outdoor activity, you will have a blast just walking through this place. My personal favorite is looking through all the campers and dreaming about vacation. So what do you do if Springfield, Missouri is calling your name? Well, rent isn’t bad there. One bedrooms average around $450 a month and three bedrooms averages just under $800. Not bad at all!

acme401 via Flickr

Our last Springfield on the tour of Springfields is Springfield, Massachusetts, population 153,000! Since I have never visited this Springfield, I had to do a little extra digging around on this Springfield. So I got a little help from my good friends, The Simpsons. I disappointedly found out that Jebediah Springfield didn’t found Springfield, MA, but I did discover that it was the first Springfield of the New World, which was pretty cool. Being the oldest Springfield in the States has its advantages, sight-seeing wise. There is plenty to see if you are at all interested in anything history. There is the Springfield Armory, which was first authorized for use by George Washington and is also where Shay’s Rebellion took place. If guns and founding fathers don’t suit your fancy history-wise, maybe you’ll prefer the Titanic museum. Now is also the perfect time go, as 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking. And if by some remote chance you’re not into 18th century US history or massive ship wrecks, there is also basketball. Springfield, MA happens to be the birthplace of basketball. This means that you can visit the basketball hall of fame and bask in all of the dribbling, shooting, and passing goodness. So before you pack up your bags and head east, you may want to know that out of the Springfields surveyed, this Springfield had the highest average rent prices, which range from $800 to $1,250 on average.

Springfield Rent Comparisons

Sadly, I was not able to discover every single fun thing to do in every Springfield in the US, but I hope that I gave you enough of a taste of some Springfields to whet your appetite to give them a visit. If I didn’t, don’t have a cow, man! If you want more Springfields, I can give you more Springfields. Let me know what you want to read or if you have any questions or comments and I can see what I can do!

In last week’s blog, I highlighted our new CaPinion feature for our redesigned PlaceofMine.com by showing how much price increases as the transportation options around you increased.  This got me thinking of what actually does cost more to live by? Thankfully, we have a lot of data from all over the country on different categories such as crime, transportation, restaurants, bars, hospitals, etc. This data was gathered from the US census bureau, police departments of various cities, Openstreetmaps, Wikipedia, Factual etc. We take all of this data and built a mechanism that provides each apartment with a rating of how it compares with the rest of the available apartments in the same city in each category. This is what we call “CaPinion” and you can see a screenshot below:

For this week’s blog I am going to investigate the differences in rent as an apartment gets closer to “amenities” as we call them. Amenities include hospitals, restaurants, grocery stores, theaters, etc. We use our CaPinion amenity score to determine how close to amenities an apartment is. As stated above, this score is derived from the apartments proximity to nearby amenities when compared to other available apartments in that city. To do this study I took our current inventory of apartments, which is over 1,000,000 listings throughout the entire country.

I first wanted to see if there was just a national trend that showed living near amenities increased your rent by so much money and that it was pretty constant. That would have made the most sense, right? Everybody wants to live in the best locations, so prices will be higher. However, what I found didn’t really show a strong increase as the amenity score went up. The graph for national amenity scores is below. You can see 1BR, 2 BR, and 3 BR apartments separated and the low, average, and high amenity scores are distinguished by color.

Looking at the chart, you can see that high amenity score apartments are the most expensive in all categories, but not by much. In fact, the average amenity scores were the lowest price! Whoever said that being mediocre doesn’t pay off?

Since the national numbers didn’t show much of a pattern for the amenity scores affecting price, I wanted to take a look on the city level. Possibly the smaller cities where there are less amenities overall are throwing off the numbers? To test this, I took the 10 largest cities in the country and repeated the configuration to see how amenity scores affected rent.

I have put the 10 cities into 3 graphs below showing them by rent for 1 bedroom, 2 bedroom, and 3 bedroom apartments.

I had 10 cities and for each city I ran the numbers for 1, 2, and 3 bedroom apartments. So there were 30 total samples. In the 30 samples, 25 of them, or just over 83%, had the high amenity scores as the most expensive apartments. So when you look at larger cities the trend of paying for a better location seems to hold true.

To show what I am talking about, look at the graph for Chicago, IL below:

As you can see, there is a clear pattern that shows increase in rent as amenity score increases.  Hence as I anticipated, as you live near more restaurants, hospitals, businesses, etc. you will be paying higher rent.

I will continue to research what makes your rent prices go up and down, so you can make the most informed decision on picking your future apartment. If there are any issues you have in your apartment search, let me know! I love to help our users search!

So I was doing some thinking today about how lucky the Amish are for not having to worry about $4.00 per gallon gas prices and how maybe, just maybe, I should ride my bike to work more. This then got me thinking about whether or not it would be cheaper for me to live next to lots of public transportation. Riding the bus (or subway, or train) to work doesn’t sound too bad, right? I wouldn’t have to pay to gas up my car as much and that sounds nice. However, as of now, I don’t live that close to any bus stop or major transportation hub, which led me to another thought, “would I save money living close to lots of public transportation?”

To answer this question, I analyzed the cost of 1, 2, and 3 bedroom apartments versus their transportation scores, 1 to 3 (low), 4 to 6 (medium), and 7 to 10 (high) in 12 major cities. What are transportation scores you say? A transportation score is a little something that we came up with at Place of Mine to help you determine whether or not the apartment you want to lease is close to public transportation stops. A low transportation score means you are further away from transit stops on average, and a high score means you are closer to transit stops than average. What I found when I looked over the data was very interesting. For one bedroom apartments in ten cities, rent was higher in high transportation score areas compared to medium and low transportation score areas. Eleven cities had higher two bedroom rent, and ten cities had higher three bedroom rent when comparing high and low transport scores. The only two cities that didn’t follow this trend were Las Vegas and Los Angeles, where for both of these cities it was cheapest to live in a medium transportation score area rather than live in a low or high scoring area. You can see the individual data for each city we surveyed below. *Note* the sampling size of the apartments per city varied. The rent prices sampled ranged from $150 to $49,999.

Now that I had some new insight as to where the cheaper apartments were versus transportation I did some number crunching to see if renting in a high transportation area really does save me money. Here are some assumptions that I made based on recent figures:

• The average commuter travels 16 miles to work every day, 32 miles daily, and 960 miles monthly.
• You will drive to work if you live in a low transportation scoring neighborhood.
• You will take public transit if you live in a high transportation scoring neighborhood.
• Average cost of gasoline is $3.82, your car gets 20 mpg, spending $184 per month on gas.
• Average price of a 30 day unlimited public transit pass is $100.
• Cost of insurance, car loans, and parking costs per month are not taken into account with calculations.

Say I’m a low transit scoring gal living in a one bedroom apartment in Austin. My rent is going to be $840 per month. With the data assumptions above, I’m going to be spending $1024 per month on rent and gasoline. Now say my friend also lives in a one bedroom apartment, but she lives in a high scoring transportation apartment and takes the bus to work. She’ll be paying $1325 per month for rent and with her taking public transit, she’s going to be spending $100 per month for her metro pass paying $1425 per month on rent and transportation. This is a difference of $401 per month with a $4812 difference for the year! So it looks like that bus pass isn’t really saving you any money after all if you live in a high transportation scoring area. You can see Austin’s chart below.

So when will using public transportation actually save you money? It is hard to say exactly as gas prices, cost of rent, and public transportation passes vary city to city, and your individual situation varies from the average prices and numbers given. There are also many times where you must use public transportation, like commuting in very large cities. However, it looks like you will save the most money if you live in a medium to low transit score area and use public transportation for the majority of your commuting. But as for me, I’m going to stick with my car until I can travel by hover couch.

As the Republican primaries start to heat up and the general election in November draws more near, we will all start to hear a lot of political talk. Whether you claim a political party or not will probably have a lot to do with how you feel about the upcoming elections, but it is always important to do some research about whom you are voting for and why. Not only will we be electing a president in November but many congressmen and congresswomen who will have a direct effect on the laws that are passed that affect all of us.

For this reason we decided to research some important statistics and disperse them based on congressional districts, so you can see what shape your area is in. By using these statistics you can see what issues your area needs to concentrate on most and vote accordingly. We wanted to cover a wide range of topics, but not overwhelm you with numbers so we used home values, median rent, unemployment, health insurance coverage, and poverty rates for this blog.

To see the statistics for your area just select a state from the dropdown menu below. After you have selected a state, then you will see a map of the state appear with the congressional districts identified for you. Find what area you live in and then view your statistics on the chart below. If you want to play around with an interactive map, just hit the “download” button under the chart and an interactive map of the state will appear that you can highlight and select different districts.

These statistics were taken from the most recent census and are not supposed to take a political stance at all. We just want to give you some background information to begin your search for the elections later this year.

We also wanted to see which states were in the best and worst situations given our criteria, so we made charts showing the 5 best and worst for each statistical category.

First we wanted to focus on the housing statistics:

By looking at this chart you can see the top and bottom 5 states for each of our housing categories. The value of that state is given in parenthesis next to the name. For example, West Virginia has the lowest median home value at $96,833 while Massachusetts has the highest median home value at $337,670. To show some comparison to the national averages, the average home value is $222,382 while the average rent is $871.

By looking at this chart you can see the top and bottom 5 states for each of our housing categories. The value of that state is given in parenthesis next to the name. For example, West Virginia has the lowest median home value at $96,833 while Massachusetts has the highest median home value at $337,670. To show some comparison to the national averages, the average home value is $222,382 while the average rent is $871.

Our other categories are shown here:

So in the above chart you can see the top and bottom 5 states for unemployment, poverty rate, and health insurance coverage. You see that for example, North Dakota has the best unemployment rate at 3.9% and Michigan has the worst at 15.67%. The national averages for the above data is a 10.96% unemployment rate, poverty rate of 11.56%, and the amount of Americans without healthcare is 15.40%.

Hopefully these figures can give you some background on where your area is at now so you know what issues to focus on for the upcoming elections. If you have any questions or comments let us know!

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A brief look at our new search engine

Around six to seven months ago we realized our apartment search engine was just not cutting it. Sure, we had millions of listings with the ability to break down the search in a very sophisticated manner – you could search for apartments with wooden floors and a doorman in New York City if you wanted. But then, there is so much more to an apartment search. Wouldn’t it be great to know how the apartment compares in terms of how close it is to grocery stores, bus stops or even what the crime in the area looks like? Secondly, you know how it feels like to search for apartments with roommates… The combination of endless email threads, setting up appointments to view apartments and spreadsheets to keep track of apartments is enough to make you want to give up. We wanted to make the entire experience easier. So, we set to work on these problems and came up with Place of Mine.

This photo shows transportation routes for New York City

Search

We want you to be able to find the right one quickly and easily among the millions of apartments in Place of Mine. In the previous version of the apartment search, the search filters allowed you to filter apartments based on aspects of the apartment. Now, with Place of Mine, you can filter based on neighborhoods, be able to overlay transit routes and crime heatmaps (in select cities) and customize the map by marking points or areas that denote special interest such as friends’ homes or work places.

The above photo displays our crime heat map for Houston, TX

Compare

When analyzing the information necessary to decide on whether an apartment is right for you, we figured that the most important were how the apartment compared along the lines of rent, access to public transit, proximity to amenities and past crime occurrences. Given this, we built a mechanism that provides each apartment with a rating of how it compares with the rest of the available apartments in that city in each category. To build this mechanism we leveraged Cazoodle’s core competency of data aggregation in order to compile data from multiple sources such as the US census bureau, police departments of various cities, Openstreetmaps, Wikipedia, Factual etc.

Our CaPinion feature shows you how each apartment compares to simliar listings on price, safety, transportation, etc.

Collaborate

Most of us share our apartments, be it roommates or significant others and everybody’s opinion matters a lot. Keeping track of numerous email threads, each person’s preferences and spreadsheets can become a nightmare. To tackle this challenge, we’ve built a feature which allows to add apartments you interested in to lists and also invite friends to collaborate on these lists. Think of it as a Dropbox for apartments. In these lists you can attach photos to your favorite listings, sort listings based on each other’s ratings for each location, add comments and notes to each floorplan and even compare apartments that are in your lists. Oh, and did I mention that this all happens in real time – your friend adds a photo and boom it appears on your list.

The Future

We see many other aspects that we want to solve. We know that more than half of you hunt for apartments on foot. We are going to build a mobile app that syncs closely with your online account so that the online and offline aspecrs of your search are tightly coordinated to make your apartment hunt easier.

Enough said, do give Place of Mine a go and let us know what you think.

Do you ever see great promotions for apartments around town highlighting discounts on rent? But these deals seem to be nowhere to be found when you are searching for your new place. There is a reason for this: property managers have specific times of the year when they push these discounts to fill all their vacancies. If you are aware of these cycles then you may be able to save yourself quite a bit of money on rent through the year.

The problem is how do you know when the prices are the lowest? Well, here at Cazoodle we have done the research for you. We dug back all the way to the start of 2010 to get historic rent prices and project our estimated rent prices through 2012 using time series forecasting. Basically, we took the monthly median rents from the past, analyzed trends and variations in those years, and came up with 2012 predictions (no magic 8 balls, tarot cards, or palm readers were harmed in the making of this blog). These graphs show the median rents in 2011 and the projected trend in 2012 for a given geography. So, for example, the national median rent is for all apartments in the USA, Illinois will be for all apartments located in Illinois, etc. What we want to do is identify cycles in rent prices so you know when the cheap apartments are still available and when only expensive apartments left over.

You can see the national median rent below:

The red line titled “2011” shows the change in median rent prices for the entire USA through 2011. “Projected 2012” shows what we project to be the national median rent through 2012. On a national level we don’t see much of a cycle of high and low priced rents, however this isn’t the case for some cities or states.

For this reason we have also broken down the historic median rents and projected 2012 rent cycles for all 50 states and 10 of our largest cities. In these graphs you will see much stronger cycles that are based on evaluating the last 2 years of rent prices. As you can see from the graph of California below, if you rent in April the median rent price of available apartments is at its lowest. This means that after April the cheaper apartments have been rented and will be harder to find. So if you live in California you better get moving; April is almost here!

It seemed, although many of the cities and states we surveyed had a relatively low rent price in April, that wasn’t always the case. You can see below that Kentucky actually has a significant increase centered around April and May:

For this reason, you should check out your individual city or state to see when you have a decrease in rent. It could save you a lot of money! First select whether you want to look at a city or state and then select the city or state you want to see the graph for. This will tell you what we project rent prices to be during 2012 and hopefully give you a window in which you should sign your apartment lease to save yourself some money.

When looking at some specific cities you can see very definitive trends in their rent prices. For example, New York City has their lowest rent prices from March to May, but then has a very significant increase all the way through August. Many cities such as Chicago, Dallas, San Diego, and San Jose seem to have rent prices that increase the later in the year you get, without a break from March to May. Depending on which city or state you live in, waiting on an apartment could cost you or save you in the long run. This is why it’s important to view your specific city or state.

If you have any questions or comments about our projections let us know!