I care about PadMapper the company just to the extent that it is a reasonable startup and seems like decent people, but the real reason I care is selfish -- it's the least bad way to do preliminary searches for apartments, and to find "pop up listings", that I've found to date.
(The second stage strategy which worked pretty well in SF at least was to find decent but unacceptable for some reason listings using padmapper, than contact the property management companies or listings services directly and ask them if they had more listings which were different. That's how I found my SF place back in 2009, starting from a craigslist ad for a place which was out of my budget.
(The second stage strategy which worked pretty well in SF at least was to find decent but unacceptable for some reason listings using padmapper, than contact the property management companies or listings services directly and ask them if they had more listings which were different. That's how I found my SF place back in 2009, starting from a craigslist ad for a place which was out of my budget.