| Status | Privately Held |
| Website | hotpads.com |
| Blog | daily.hotpads.com |
| Category | Web |
| Phone | 202-232-1581 |
| info@hotpads.com | |
| Address |
1420 17th St. NW Washington, DC, 20036 USA |
| Employees | 11 |
| Founded | 5/05 |
| Series A, 3/07 1 Meakem Becker Venture Capital | $2.3M |
HotPads was founded in early 2005 by three college roommates from the University of Notre Dame to make the housing search process easier.
HotPads is free-to-list and free-to-search. It currently generates revenue from third-party advertising but intends to launch paid featured listings.
HotPads.com launched in November of 2005 as strictly a rental housing search engine. It quickly grew to over 100,000 active rental listings.
In November of 2007, HotPads launched a For Sale search engine to compliment its growing rental portal. It has grown to nearly 2,000,000 active For Sale listings.
HotPads works to deliver as much relevant information to housing shoppers as possible during their search. It features demographic and housing heat maps that allow users to get quick snapshots of cities or neighborhoods. HotPads also maps points of interest like schools and public transportation stops.
HotPads also features the first Buy vs. Rent search portal. Housing shoppers can browse both homes for sale and for rent at the same time based on the estimated monthly cost. Users can customize the mortgage variables to meet their unique situation. This allows housing shoppers to see exactly what they can afford to buy and what they can afford to rent, allowing them to make more informed housing decisions.