No Craigslist, no problem: PadMapper refocuses on PadLister to source apartment rentals

Last week, Craigslist blocked apartment search startup PadMapper from accessing its rental listings. This week, PadMapper founder Eric DeMenthon refocused on his apartments-for-rent sister service PadLister as a source to feed rental listings into both PadMapper and Craigslist … as well as several competing services.

“With Craigslist gone, PadMapper is likely missing a lot of the best sublet/small landlord options, so I’d really like to get small landlords to list directly,” DeMenthon said this morning on the PadMapper blog.

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VentureBeat reached out to DeMenthon for comment, and he responded by email while boarding an airplane.

PadLister supports multiple listing services. New rentals are automatically listed on PadMapper, of course, but users can generate formatted content to post on Craigslist as well, said DeMenthon: “It just generates HTML in a nice layout that you can copy and paste.”

In addition, PadLister helps you get your listing on other rental sites. “It syndicates your listing to some other services, including rentBits and Oodle.”

Summer is peak apartment-hunting season, DeMenthon said, so he is hoping to reach as many landlords as possible.

He is still hoping to get Craigslist data back via some form of licensing, but is pursuing PadLister as an alternate option in case that never happens. He is not yet sure what the revenue impact of losing Craigslist rental listings might be.

When asked if Craigslist might block data generated by PadLister, DeMenthon said he’s not certain:

“It’s very possible, but this doesn’t give them any reason to do it. It doesn’t link offsite or anything like that to generate site traffic.”

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PadLister is a free service for landlords who wish to list a property. The site does charge a fee for screening potential renters, if landlords choose.

VentureBeat has reached out to Craigslist for comment and will update this story if we get a response.

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