MyNewPlace and Walk Score Team Up to Improve Online Apartment Search

January 13th, 2010 by Matt DiChiara| Posted in About Us, Apartment Living | 3 Comments »

We are very excited to announce that MyNewPlace and Walk Score are working together to improve the online apartment marketplace for renters across the nation. MyNewPlace is now the first major apartment search website to feature Walk Score walkability ratings on every listing.

What is Walk Score? Using a proprietary algorithm, the folks at Walk Score analyze an address and determine what sort of amenities are within walking distance, and assign the address a score on a scale from 0 to 100. A perfect 100 means a property is a Walkers’ Paradise: you can access everything you need for daily life within walking distance, from schools and grocery stores to coffee shops and restaurants.

Now, apartment hunters can search for apartments on MyNewPlace by their walkability, i.e. whether or they can walk to work or to public transportation, how far away schools are, if they can easily get to a grocery store and whatever other ‘neighborhood amenities’ are important to them.

Why is walkability so important? For one, not using a car saves a ton of money and helps promote a more environmentally conscious lifestyle. Instead of searching and paying for parking, gas and insurance, many renters (including this one) have found that living in an area in which they can commute and recreate without the need of a car to be quite liberating. Additionally, Walk Score gives a great sense of the feel of a neighborhood—whether it’s likely to be filled with bustling sidewalks filled with pedestrians, or whether it will feel like more of a bedroom community.

On MyNewPlace, renters can use Walk Score to help inform their renting decisions in a few ways:

1. When renters first search for rentals in a given city, they will be able to sort the apartments displayed by Walk Score. The filter option is located at the top of the page and that apartment’s Walk Score rating is included in the listing’s details:

   

   

2. If a renter is looking at a certain apartment or rental home, that page now includes a Walk Score for that property’s address. A renter can get a better feel for what the neighborhood includes by clicking on the Walk Score link, which will show a Walkscore.com page with the address of the property as a reference point or by using MyNewPlace’s Google Maps integration to search for specific points of interest.

   

So how does Walk Score determine how to rate neighborhoods? Their algorithm grabs information from a variety of different sources to see whether a person or family can reasonably live without using a car. They score a given neighborhood based on the following criteria:

• A center: Walkable neighborhoods have a discernable center, whether it’s a shopping district, a main street, or a public space.
• Density: The neighborhood is compact enough for local businesses to flourish and for public transportation to run frequently.
• Mixed income, mixed use: Housing is provided for everyone who works in the neighborhood: young and old, singles and families, rich and poor. Businesses and residences are located near each other.
• Parks and public space: There are plenty of public places to gather and play.
• Pedestrian-centric design: Buildings are placed close to the street to cater to foot traffic, with parking lots relegated to the back.
• Nearby schools and workplaces: Schools and workplaces are close enough that most residents can walk from their homes.

We are also very happy to power apartment rental listings for Walk Score; on every Walkscore.com map page, Walk Score users will be able to search for apartments for rent on MyNewPlace based on the neighborhood that they are looking at on Walk Score. So, as renters do research on neighborhoods where they’d like to move, they’ll easily be able to see what kinds of apartments are available. We’re also powering an embeddable Walk Score Walkable Apartments widget that you can grab on our Free Tools page at http://www.mynewplace.com/freetools.

Working with a site like WalkScore is just one more way that MyNewPlace provides renters with the best way to find their new apartment.