This question may be interpreted as "too localized", but it is not.
I'm interested in what you find to be the best sites for this type of operation, regardless of where they are located. For instance, I want to learn about how do these sites do the following:
and so on...
The ones I've had most sucess with is:
When I was looking for my house, I found Trulia to be very helpful in terms of the search and notification options it has.
Geographic Info: Search by city and zip code. You can also have it show everything within the visible Google Maps area. For cities and such, you can also select specific neighborhoods.
Search Parameters: City/State/Zip/Neighborhood, Price Range, # Bedrooms, # Bathroom, Open Houses, New Listings, Listing Type, Property Type, Square Feet Range, Keyword, Year Built, Lot Size, Foreclosure Type, MLS ID, Price/sqft.
Personalize: Yes. You can save searches and receive email alerts.
I like Nestoria.co.uk for its combination of list and map search.
Moving around the map refreshes the search listings around the centered location.
RateMyStudentRental.com has housing for colleges and universities. It focuses on ratings and reviews, rather than just listing properties (and it's still pretty new), so it doesn't have a ton of housing listed yet.
You can do a personalized search here: www.ratemystudentrental.com/search
What do you mean, how does it handle geographic data? Do you mean what's the UI like, or how does it handle it on the back end?
Also, HelloRent.com has an amazing interface for browsing/searching/filtering rental properties on Craigslist, but it's still in private beta for now.
DISCLAIMER: I built RateMyStudentRental.com, so I'm a bit biased ;-)
My favorite, that I just found yesterday in fact, is:
It automagically pulls in Craigslist, ForRent, Apartments.com & "Others". You can filter by price, size, bathrooms, bedrooms, whether they allow animals or not, pictures & more.
It's based on Google Maps. Very handy. :)
Gotta go with PadMapper.com. It aggregates lots of sources, offers lots of filters, lets you hide/favorite listings, lets you subscribe to updates to your search via email, and even has an iPhone app. And it's all map based, as the name suggests :-)
Here in Aus I've always used the traditional domain.com.au and realestate.com.au. They're not super good, but they're always adding more features. They've got everything that rchern mentions. I find the map view the handiest of the lot.
A new one launched a couple of weeks ago - tenancyone.com.au. I've not used it yet, but the basic idea sound good. You create a "profile" (I don't know what that entails) and they provide "tools" (once again, haven't looked closely). Their drawcard is they let the realestate agents find you, rather than the other way around, which is a novel way of looking at it.
The best site that I have found is Freerentalsite.com. As far as search you can type in anything that you want. Address, landmark, a park, school whatever and it gives you the results with a radius of that search. They call it "borderless search".
Once you have the location, you can refine your search even more, or click on the mapping to see those results on the map. Best part it is international, but i heard that it is not coming to the US until january 2011.
