Ask HN: Would this make finding a new place suck less?

As a standalone app, difficult. People would use it so rarely that you'd never build up much momentum.

As a feature for existing real estate sites, though, it could be great.

It's not clear if an iphone or android app would be needed fo such a purpose. An html5 touch-accelerated page would be sufficient.

You know, NYC would be a nice place to start. You have the subway map anyway so you could reasonably estimate where people could live subject to commute constraints and actually see where the critical resources are located. The real innovation here would be in a nice UI -- using craigslist or going with a broker are pains in the arse.

Have you taken a look at Walk Score (http://www.walkscore.com/)? Is it something that comes along the lines of what you we're thinking, except a bit more personalized with taking into consideration your workplace?

Laying listings on a map more than solves this problem. Padmapper is great.

The biggest flaw with Padmapper is that so many places don't list their address, so they can't be mapped. Solve that and you're way more useful.

I'd adore a Google Earth overlay that showed rentals and/or homes for sale (preferably grabbed according to my own criteria) so that I can use things like drive time to important locations, school boundaries, etc. to find places I'd like to live.

The mapping that existing real estate and rental listing sites use are frustrating to me because searching by location is clunky -- by city or zip code or even distance as the bird flies is too vague. I want to make sure I don't spend my life commuting, that going to our dojo isn't a prohibitively long trip, that I like the school my child would be in, and that there's a nearby grocery store or grocery delivery that suits my dietary restrictions.

I want to be able to overlay whatever data is important to me -- elementary school boundaries, grocery stores or delivery areas, traffic patterns, etc -- on my home search.

I want to be able to pick a few locations and specify maximum drive times for each, then find places in the overlap (bonus points if I can input my schedule so typical traffic patterns are considered).

I have no idea how you'd make money off of it, though. :/

I would love to see an App like this. When my wife and I moved to Denver I got an old fashioned dead tree map out and put a pin where she worked and a pin where I worked. I then took a string that would be the longest commute that my wife would accept and did the same for myself. We then searched for apartments in that location. It was a good system but it didn't help us find the apartment we ultimatley choose. I didn't take in to consideration a major highway and the effect that would have on the commute time. An App that had an estimated drive time function would be great. Then create profiles for each person and the app could logarithmically show areas that would have least amount of commute for both parties. Incorporate a Apartment, Rental (house/condo), and real estate finder and you got yourself a killer App for people moving. Lots of marketing synergy and in App ad/purchasing possibilities too.

I was sort of thinking the same thing myself. I was hoping one of the housing search sites would have an API/affiliate program I could utilize to list places for rent. Unfortunately this isn't the case. I'll have to think this one out a bit more to figure out if it's feasible.

Accurate assessment (I guess I can't use the word "guarantee") of peace and quiet. I don't know how you, from your position, can achieve this.