New Rent Level Search Tool Debuts.

A new national rental [re]search tool was announced last week. It's called Zilpy and the main site is HERE.

Appears site is focused on providing information about rent levels as opposed to finding currently available individual units. Shows month over month change in rents, by bedroom size and by sq. ft, and number of units included in each neighborhood/community.

Clicking on individual neighborhoods or communities provides further breakout of data within that neighborhood. TIP: Clicking on the NUMBER of units within individual neighborhood (in parenthesis in column to the left) brings up a MAP showing you bubbles with the units included in search for that neighborhood. Clicking on an individual bubble then shows you the details for that rental--date, ADDRESS, type of building, rent level, and key amenities.

Geography can move downward form state, to metro, county, city, neighborhood or zip code level.

• HERE, is a "Portland METRO" rent search with more than 19,000 units included and even more details by neighborhoods/community.
  
• HERE is an impressive example of a "Portland, OR" search which returns results from nearly 8,000 units in dozens of neighborhoods by bedroom size within Multnomah County).
  
• HERE is a "Beaverton , OR" search which returns results for about 850 units, in 13 different neighborhoods within Beaverton.
  
• HERE is a "Portland OR, 97211" zip code search. Note: While nearly 600 units are included in this zip code, I have noticed some other zip codes (97204 for example) returned far fewer units.

Some customization of search, other than by geo, also appears to be possible. While this site provides very valuable rent level information it does not appear to provide anywhere near the capability of customization as does my favorite Portland area rental search tool , Housing Connections. (Housing Connections also provides information on individual current listings which Zilpy does NOT provide).

P.S. I have added Housing Connections to the links pane to the right. (If, after addition use, Zilpy continues to prove useful it will be added to links pane at a future date).