Neighborhood Matchmaker

I just discovered another house hunting tool over on Inman News.
It's a website called Hoodeo that bills itself as "The Neighborhood Matchmaker." The concept is simple: create a profile by answering a few questions about income and general housing preferences, and Hoodeo will match you up with homes that it thinks fit you to a T.

So is Hoodeo worth its salt? Kind of. Based on my answers (and my saying that I didn't want to leave the Knoxville area), Hoodeo placed me in Fountain City, which is a great part of Knoxville that my husband and I once thought about moving to. The homes it picked for me, however, were totally not my style. This is maybe not such a big surprise, since the only questions Hoodeo asked me about what I was looking for in a home were price, number of bedrooms, bathrooms and square footage.

Just for larfs, I went back and answered all of my questions the same, except that I said I was willing to leave K-Town. Apparently my #1 dream city is a place called Cedar Hill, Texas, which appears to be right outside of Dallas. A match made in heaven? Um, no.

Still, it's an interesting idea and it works for renters as well as for those looking to buy. Go check it out and then come back here and let me know what your neighborhood match is in the comments.

Neighborhood Rental Information

I have a new website obsession and it's called Zilpy. Zilpy is like a hybrid of Zip Skinny and Zillow, but specifically geared toward renters and investors. According to their website:

Zilpy is a free online rental market facts and analysis service dedicated to help you make better rental and investment decisions.

We do exactly what you would do if you had to do the analysis yourself – collect data from all available sources (newspaper classifieds, online classifieds, apartment rentals, etc.) and filter the data based on your criteria (proximity, property type, crime rate, population, income, etc). We do all this heavy lifting for you so that you can concentrate on your real goal: find the right rental property.

Zilpy also answers to the following questions:

• - Where are the cheapest 2 bedroom Condos or Townhouses?
• - How much rent can I get at this specific address?
• - What is the rental trend in a specific area, can I see heat maps?
• - What is the demographic structure (population, age, income) of a specific rental area?

Enter a potential rental address in Zilpy and you'll get a Google map showing other nearby rental properties, complete with their current rents and amenities.; comparable rental properties in the area; and a suggested potential rent for the subject property. You'll also get other information for the area, such as average renter occupancy, vacancy rates and monthly rent affordability. In addition, Zilpy will pull census information for the area, a la Zip Skinny.

While it's not perfect, Zilpy seems like a good tool for both renters and potential landlords. It's also a good way to see how many rentals are in an area you're thinking about moving to.

Out of curiosity, I entered my home address in Kingston Park and was told that I could rent it for $1,425 - anybody looking for a place to live?

Quote of the Day

From Bill Lublin at agentgenius:

...everyone who has a monthly housing expense is paying someone’s mortgage, so it may as well be their own. Unless they are my tenants - in that case they should continue to rent and pay off my mortgages.