PadMapper is a very useful tool. I used it when I moved to NY. It filters results well, but the only problem I had was that it didn't always have the correct location. I assume it scrapes the link to the Google Map from Craigslist, so the inaccuracy might be from the advertiser who doesn't put in the correct geo-location.
Yeah, there are some issues with this, usually because the address is ambiguous or downright wrong. People throwing up stuff on CList aren't always very careful about their data entry, unfortunately.
Flagging helps with this somewhat, but that's dependent on high usage, which isn't the case in all areas. There is some automatic stuff that runs to filter obviously wrong things out, but I plan on looking more into that.
That's good to know. I thought I had found some real bargains in Manhattan but then realized the apartments were not in Manhattan, e.g. the address on Craigslist would simply be '34th St.' and PadMapper would plot it in Manhattan, but it is was actually 34th St. in Astoria.
It would also be good if PadMapper could scrape addresses from the title of posts (or from within the post) when there is no (full) address link at the bottom of a Craigslist post. This might be a bit more tricky since the way some of the addresses are written can't even be interpreted by Google Maps.
I still found PadMapper to be the best way to find apartments in areas I wanted to live, and it is a lot clearer than HotPads and Google Property search. One thing that I would really love is a more complete map that shows transportation and amenities like Google Maps. I often found myself having to re-search the address on Google Maps to find out what was in the neighbourhood.
My experiences are still fresh in my mind, so feel free to contact me if you want some more feedback.
Yeah, that'd be great if you could share (padmapper at gmail). I started recreating the google transit overlay, but it's pretty nontrivial to make a readable subway map programmatically and I got sidetracked on other projects.
If there's no map link, it attempts to infer based on that other info you mention and classifies them as likely inaccurate. Frequently it's the map link that's wrong, since people often file it in re wrong sub-CL and CL seems to modify the map link based on that info.
I'd be really interested if there were aspects you liked (or didn't like) about the others you tried.
