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	<title>Into.the.Void. &#187; rmaps</title>
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	<description>Into The Void</description>
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		<title>Searching for a new house</title>
		<link>http://www.void.gr/kargig/blog/2010/02/28/searching-for-a-new-house/</link>
		<comments>http://www.void.gr/kargig/blog/2010/02/28/searching-for-a-new-house/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 28 Feb 2010 08:37:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>kargig</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Internet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[aggeliestanea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Android]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[athens]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gps status]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[house]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[real estate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rento]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rmaps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spitogatos]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tagtodo list]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Αθήνα]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[σπίτι]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[χρυσή ευκαιρία]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.void.gr/kargig/blog/?p=948</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve recently moved from Thessaloniki to Athens, Greece and of course the very first thing I had to do was to find a new house. To make my life easier (?) I tried to go a bit techie on that. Using tools/sites on the web and my Android. And here&#8217;s what I did and what [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;ve recently moved from Thessaloniki to Athens, Greece and of course the very first thing I had to do was to find a new house. To make my life easier (?) I tried to go a bit techie on that. Using tools/sites on the web and my Android. And here&#8217;s what I did and what I used for anyone who might be interested.</p>
<p>First of all I found some sites with real estate listings. The ones I found/used/tried to use were: <a href="http://www.xe.gr">Χρυσή Ευκαιρία</a>, <a href="http://www.rento.gr">Rento</a>, <a href="http://www.spitogatos.gr">Spitogatos</a> and <a href="http://www.aggeliestanea.gr">aggelies ta nea</a>.</p>
<p>Each one though has it own benefits and problems, apart from some who only have problems.<br />
<strong><em>Aggelies Ta Nea</em></strong>:<br />
<em>pros</em><br />
None. I can&#8217;t find anything innovative about this site.<br />
<em>Cons<br />
</em>i) It has very few listings of places to rent in the areas I liked (downtown Athens).<br />
ii) It is full of listings by real estates agents who ask you as payment one full rent if they manage to find you a house.<br />
iii) There&#8217;s no map showing where each house is.<br />
iv) There are pics of very very few houses in the listings.</p>
<p><strong><em>Spitogatos</em></strong>:<br />
<em>Pros</em>:<br />
This site has a really neat feature, price per square meter. It&#8217;s quite nice to have the site calculate it for you.<br />
<em>Cons</em>:<br />
i) It has very few listings of places to rent in the areas I liked (downtown Athens).<br />
ii) It&#8217;s default drop down price filtering boxes are a bit weird. It goes from 150->200->300->500->750>1000 Euros. So if I choose a price range of 300-500 euros I get a url like this: </p>
<p>http://www.spitogatos.gr/gr/search/results/residential/rent/r100/m2011m/nd/all/300/500/nd/85/nd/nd/nd/nd/nd/nd/nd/nd/all/rankingScore_desc</p>
<p>If I change it to:</p>
<p>http://www.spitogatos.gr/gr/search/results/residential/rent/r100/m2011m/nd/all/<strong>350/450</strong>/nd/85/nd/nd/nd/nd/nd/nd/nd/nd/all/rankingScore_desc</p>
<p>I get exactly what I wanted.<br />
Having drop down boxes might be fine for some people, but they don&#8217;t let me be as specific as I would like. A form to fill the price range by hand would be a lot more useful for me.<br />
iii) There&#8217;s no map showing where each house is.</p>
<p><strong><em>Rento</em></strong>:<br />
Pros:<br />
i) Rento is the most innovative site I found. Every house listing is on google maps and you can access its details by just clicking on a house.<br />
ii) It also features a VERY innovative search bar. You actually type a sentence about the house you would like and it searches for it.<br />
iii) Each listing has pictures<br />
iv) You can contact the owner by email<br />
v) There&#8217;s an option to note each listing you like so you get something like &#8220;bookmarks&#8221;.</p>
<p>Cons:<br />
i) It has very few listings of places to rent in the areas I liked (downtown Athens).<br />
ii) The search bar did not have a negation clause. You can&#8217;t search for &#8220;not something&#8221;. So since I didn&#8217;t want a ground flour house, I couldn&#8217;t filter them out.<br />
iii) The search bar would sometimes filter more than you asked for. If I searched for a price range of 350-450 and got some houses, then if I search for a 40-60 sq. meters I got some others. If I searched for both the price range and the sq. meters I got very very few results.<br />
iv) Many of the listings were quite outdated. Places had been rent weeks ago and the listings were still on the site. (I guess that&#8217;s a problem with real estate sites&#8230;owners don&#8217;t tell the sites whether the house has been sold/rented when that happends).<br />
v) There&#8217;s no way to see the most recently placed listings.</p>
<p>The awkward thing about Rento was that I met the people who manage it in a <a href="http://rubyst.es/">Ruby meeting</a> in Athens one week after I got the house. They were aware of these problems and they said that they have already corrected them and will push their changes to the site very soon. I sure hope so because the site is definitely worth it.</p>
<p>One suggestion for rento would be to have an option to export as kml the &#8220;bookmarked&#8221; houses.</p>
<p><strong><em>Χρυσή Ευκαιρία</em></strong>:<br />
<em>Pros</em>:<br />
i) Many many houses listed.<br />
ii) The filtering for the search works very well.</p>
<p><em>Cons</em>:<br />
i) Very few pics of the houses (if any)<br />
ii) Not every house is listed on a map<br />
iii) In order to get the owner&#8217;s telephone you have to send an sms, or call a number and pay some amount of money.<br />
iv) Not every house has an address listed.</p>
<p>I ended up using Χρυσή Ευκαιρία due to it&#8217;s massive database with listed houses. I tried to use rento and spitogatos but I just couldn&#8217;t find what I wanted. (Maybe I&#8217;ll get luckier when I&#8217;ll try to move to a new house.)</p>
<p>I then created an unlisted google map called &#8220;new houses&#8221; and started placing marks on the houses from Χρυσή Ευκαιρία that I liked, sorted by date of last update, and were placed on a map in the site. Then I started calling the owners of the rest to find out where they were. If they were in a place that I liked I made an appointment to go and check the house.<br />
I placed all the appointments at the &#8220;<a href="http://teodorfilimon.com/android/Tag-ToDo-List/basic.html">TagToDo List</a>&#8221; application for my android.<br />
Unfortunately I couldn&#8217;t use the &#8220;My maps Editor&#8221; by Google on my android due to some bug it stopped connecting to google maps. It would be really useful to have this app because I could have all the places I placed on &#8220;new houses&#8221; and have them with me. Instead I had to print the maps with the marks on them.</p>
<p>Finally in order to walk around the city and not get lost I used the <a href="http://www.androidfreeware.net/download-rmaps.html">Rmaps</a> application. It&#8217;s so much better than the standard google maps because you can get many different maps, and with the addition of <a href="http://www.androidfreeware.net/download-gps-status.html">GPS Status</a> you can copy paste your exact location to any notes applications you might be using on android to track new houses you find while walking.</p>
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