All this talk about the economy got you down?
Why not head to the Coast?
Don’t know about you – but I could sure use a vacation these days. Hotpads, another search portal we haven’t heard much from lately (see Roost Changes Up Their Game), now can help.
They’ve just launched a new feature on their site that adds vacation properties to their site. The company claims this is the first map-based vacation home search tool.
The service is definitely useful and has around 20,000 available properties in the US. You can even book a stay at many of the homes you’ve found directly through the site.
A couple of things I found missing however; there’s no way for current owners to add their properties to the database and there doesn’t seem to be a way to sort the properties by user ratings (i.e. those properties getting the most ‘favorites’).
Plus Hotpads still has its goofy icons which tend to consume far too much virtual real estate for my liking.
I did like the integration of Street View however (though it seemed pretty buggy and didn’t always work). I expect this to be a really nice tool to have when researching a destination home to rent for a getaway. When you’re dropping a couple grand, it’d be nice to see what’s next door and across the street.
See you in the surf!
