Socialserve.com

What Is a Housing Locator Anyway?

Good question! There are several types of housing locators. Which housing locator is best for you?

Types of Housing Locators:

Human Housing Locators

Humans are the original housing locators, from caseworkers helping people transition away from homelessness to college students seeking off-campus apartments to employees in corporate relocation programs. Human housing locators often use Internet housing locators to search for housing.

Internet Housing Locators

The Socialserve.com® Model: Since 1999, Socialserve.com has set the standard for Internet housing locators amongst literally tens of thousands of websites, listing everything from apartments to mobile homes to duplexes and single-family units, including Section 8 and accessible properties, assisted living facilities, market-rate housing and more. Internet housing locators can be managed or unmanaged:

Unmanaged Internet Housing Locators - The most common housing locator model

Little to no human support
Repeated and out-of-date listings
May require landlords to subscribe to a pay service and even pay extra for "preferred listings," meaning that search results can be skewed by how much a landlord pays to list, not by how well a listing matches a housing-seeker's needs
Searchers are frequently asked to input personal information, which can be shared for marketing purposes and compromise personal security and Fair Housing rights

Other unmanaged housing locators on the Internet include static and aggregator housing locators.

A static housing locator is usually a PDF or spreadsheet of housing listings that is shared online but rarely updated.

Aggregators scrape and spread around listings from a wide variety of other web-based housing listings. Information is neither validated nor updated, meaning that searchers waste time browsing already-rented or otherwise inaccurate listings. We refer to this as the "garbage-in, garbage-out" model.

Socialserve.com Is the Other Kind, a Managed Internet Housing Locator.

Listings are monitored by human eyes for accuracy and Fair Housing compliance
Listings are updated continuously to ensure that information is current
Live, free, human support is available by toll-free phone, email, fax and mail
People can search for housing anonymously and always for free
Socialserve.com offers free training and support to agencies that need the service
Updated listings mean excellent housing data and comprehensive reporting options

Socialserve.com is the cure for the common housing locator, and since 1999, we have grown to offer software solutions across the housing spectrum. For more about what we do, please download our menu of services [PDF 724KB] and visit our About Us page.

We'd love to hear from you! Contact us by email or phone at 1-877-428-8844.