FivePad
November 17, 2011 6:20 PM Subscribe
FivePad
Finding an apartment is hard work. There's a million things to keep track of for every place you find, and things get doubly complicated if you're trying to find a place with a roommate or significant other. FivePad is a powerful little tool to help you keep track of an apartment search, from websites to landlords to roommates.
You start by pasting the URL or street address of an apartment into FivePad, which then builds a comprehensive listing page including an area to add notes. One click sends the note to the email address on the place.
You can also add roommates. When you do, they get emails about everything you add, and they can add stuff as well. Easy peasy.
Finding an apartment is hard work. There's a million things to keep track of for every place you find, and things get doubly complicated if you're trying to find a place with a roommate or significant other. FivePad is a powerful little tool to help you keep track of an apartment search, from websites to landlords to roommates.
You start by pasting the URL or street address of an apartment into FivePad, which then builds a comprehensive listing page including an area to add notes. One click sends the note to the email address on the place.
You can also add roommates. When you do, they get emails about everything you add, and they can add stuff as well. Easy peasy.
Role: creator
Thanks so much! What if you could define your own fields? Like, there would be a default set of them but you could go add and edit later.
Another thing that's definitely going to be there is "important spots". You'll be able to add the addresses of important places, like your train station, work, spouse's work, etc, and get directions and commute times when you add new places.
posted by zrail at 8:07 PM on November 17, 2011
Another thing that's definitely going to be there is "important spots". You'll be able to add the addresses of important places, like your train station, work, spouse's work, etc, and get directions and commute times when you add new places.
posted by zrail at 8:07 PM on November 17, 2011
Auto-routing and calculating distances would be awesome.
The fields I kept track of in my unwieldy Google Spreadsheet last time I looked for an apartment were:
- Heat type
- Average heat cost
- Average water cost
- Laundry in building
- Kitchen type
- Parking type
- Deposit
- Fee (this may be a Boston-specific thing, but around here, some apartments are only available through agents that charge fees)
- Neighborhood
A couple other things that'd be helpful, if you eventually have time:
- An auto-total for the cost fields.
- Caching the Craigslist ad. These things seem to get taken down every 2-5 days or so that the landlord or rental agent can repost the ad.
- Being able to post photos from a visit.
- This is hazardous, but: as many of the fields as possible auto-filled by scraping the ad.
posted by ignignokt at 9:41 PM on November 17, 2011
The fields I kept track of in my unwieldy Google Spreadsheet last time I looked for an apartment were:
- Heat type
- Average heat cost
- Average water cost
- Laundry in building
- Kitchen type
- Parking type
- Deposit
- Fee (this may be a Boston-specific thing, but around here, some apartments are only available through agents that charge fees)
- Neighborhood
A couple other things that'd be helpful, if you eventually have time:
- An auto-total for the cost fields.
- Caching the Craigslist ad. These things seem to get taken down every 2-5 days or so that the landlord or rental agent can repost the ad.
- Being able to post photos from a visit.
- This is hazardous, but: as many of the fields as possible auto-filled by scraping the ad.
posted by ignignokt at 9:41 PM on November 17, 2011
I think it's pretty neat, but would never spend $30 for it. I guess I would be willing to give up five bucks or something, but it might be worth finding a better way to monetize.
posted by pwally at 11:16 AM on November 18, 2011
posted by pwally at 11:16 AM on November 18, 2011
I've added custom fields to FivePad. You can now define fields for whatever pieces of data you want to track about a place and they'll show up everywhere you'd expect.
posted by zrail at 2:15 PM on November 19, 2011
posted by zrail at 2:15 PM on November 19, 2011
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I don't know what's in the pipeline, but fields for things like distance from a train station, the type of parking, and utilities included, the type of heat rather than just a single kind of notes field would be great. Then, you could have a comparison view of all of your places that uses those field.
What's already there looks great, though.
posted by ignignokt at 7:57 PM on November 17, 2011