Monday, August 1, 2011

The rental hunt

Vacancies are up in Victoria lately. Searching for a half-way decent rental should be a bit easier these days than in years past. And a cool new tool is on the scene to help you isolate listings by neighbourhood and move beyond the terrible list format of Craigslist.

PadMapper is making rental hunting easier and map-based:

It's pulling in rental listings from a variety of sources, though Craigslist seems to be dominant... which is fine since it's one of, if not, the biggest rental listings source in Victoria these days.

If you're in the rental market looking to move up, down, sideways or just want to find some cheap student apartment options for the upcoming school year, check it out here: PadMapper.com
  

10 comments:

Dave said...

Pretty cool, would be nice if it gave you a preview when you put your cursor on it.
Dave#1

Johnny-Dollar said...

Fantastic, finally something that is user friendly for renters.

Marko said...

http://www.inman.com/news/2011/08/1/tight-supply-drives-real-estate-prices-in-toronto-area

Marko said...

Tuesday August 2, 2011 8:30am:

July July
2011 2010
Net Unconditional Sales: 523 527
New Listings: 1,374 1,119
Active Listings: 5,094 4,477

Please Note

•Left Column: stats for the entire month from this year
•Right Column: stats for the entire month from last year

Mindset said...

Wow, almost 20% more new listings in the month than last year, 12% more active listings than last year and less sales? Some simple math puts the real (adjusted for inventory) monthly sales number to more like 450.

With the usually silent Harper posting warnings on our economomy, and all that global printed money drying up that was fleeing money markets and into our commodities in an attempt to find security, you gotta wonder how the next 6 months are going to play out for Canada. Let's just hope for BC and Victoria the HST vote goes yes, or we will have to hand back a big chunk of change to the feds on top of it all, which in this govt town, would be quite substantial for the local economy.

Thanks for the numbers Marko. Do you have an average SFH price? How did that fare?

Anonymous said...

PadMapper is a great way to get a feel for the market, but it's only as good as the data it can scrape, which isn't always that reliable. The house I'm renting now was missed by PadMapper and our second choice was placed in the wrong neighbourhood on the map.

If you're actively looking for a rental, I'd suggest you check PadMapper, but keep scanning Craigslist, Used Victoria and Kijiji too if you don't find what you're looking for. I found it was fairly easy to keep track of new listings from those other sites in Google Reader.

@Dave, you can click the pins for a preview -- not quite what you're looking for, but close.

a simple man said...

"The average price for single-family homes sold in Greater Victoria last month was $581,117, down from $629,292 in June."

a simple man said...

love it.

"A total of 523 homes and other properties sold in July through the Victoria Real Estate Board’s Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®), down from 618 sales in June but very close to the 527 sales in July of last year. Overall prices, meantime, declined somewhat across all major property types.

Victoria Real Estate Board President, Dennis Fimrite, noted that despite the drop in the number of sales last month compared to June, market activity is now very close to what we saw at this time last year. "In the coming months, we anticipate that market activity will remain relatively stable and similar to what we saw during the summer and early fall months of last year."

Fimrite added that the number of properties available for sale continued to increase at the end of last month with inventory levels currently 14 per cent higher than a year ago. "The available choice for buyers increased further last month with 5,094 properties available for sale at the end of July, up slightly from the 5,050 properties available for sale at the end of June." Fimrite added that the increasing inventory means sellers need to be realistic in pricing their homes in order to attract qualified buyers. "A REALTOR’S® expertise can be invaluable in today’s market to help sellers price their homes to best advantage," added Fimrite."

MC said...

Oh look, Renters are retaliating at the high prices on Craigslist!

http://victoria.en.craigslist.ca/apa/2526331939.html

MC said...

P.S I have my neighbour on board to move with me if I find a place with two suites, especially in Fairfield area. Maybe we could just put a lowball offer on a house somewhere instead?