Run by Mid-Atlantic real-estate firm Corus Home Realty, Realtyinstitute.com offers a wealth of information about Washington-area neighborhoods and real estate.

The site produces hundreds of neighborhood reports organized by Zip code. Each serves up interactive maps, sales-price data, and demographic information such as median household income and population. For-sale listings are broken down by type—condo, townhouse, or detached single-family home—and price. Reports include links to articles about the neighborhood and the chance to talk with a “neighborhood specialist,” a local resident who’s volunteered to chat with potential buyers.

Another useful feature is the “Realty Institute Index,” a rating of the real-estate market for each Zip code. Taking into account the previous month’s sales activity, the index rates the market conditions of neighborhoods from cold to hot.

If you’re in the market for a new rental, HotPads.com could be your next favorite bookmark.  

John Fitzpatrick, Douglas Pope, and Matt Corgan, three DC housemates who recently graduated from Notre Dame, founded HotPads, an online rental listings firm, in 2005. According to the Washington Business Journal, the company just received $2 million from a venture capital firm and are moving from its former headquarters—an apartment—to offices in Dupont Circle.

The site, which superimposes rental listings on interactive maps, offers a few useful search options. Click on “Map Search” to see a map of the Washington area, complete with population data and median rent prices. You can even read Wikipedia articles about neighborhoods, view aerial photos, and see graphs of pricing trends.  

Click on a neighborhood at the bottom of the map and you’ll get a tight view of the area with icons of types of rentals, from large apartment buildings to single-family homes. Clicking on an icon brings up pictures and statistics like price, amenities, and lease terms. You can narrow the search by price, size of building, type of listing (including sublets and shares), or address. If something catches your eye, click on “Points of Interest” to show nearby Metro stations, public and private schools, and colleges.   

And if you need to find someone to take your old place, HotPads can help. It’s free to post a listing.  

Krillion makes finding and buying kitchen appliances easier.

The days of spending hours on store Web sites looking for appliances may be over.

According to a press release from Krillion, a new search engine, “75 percent of those who buy big-ticket items do all their research online and make over 90 percent of their purchases offline.” Launched last month, Krillion hopes to make it easier to find national brands in local stores.  

How does it work? Let’s say you have done the research and decided to buy a Whirlpool refrigerator. You know the model, size, and color you want. Instead of visiting the sites of—or worse calling—Sears, Home Depot, Lowe’s, and other appliance outlets to find the best deal, you can use Krillion. Enter your zip code and the appliance name and model in the search engine, then Krillion produces a list of stores that sell that model, plus prices. If you are unsure of the model you want, you can search by broader terms like “White GE Refrigerators.”

The site focuses on large appliances—refrigerators, ovens, ranges, washers and dryers, and dishwashers—but plans to expand its reach to other products like consumer electronics and lawn and garden equipment soon.

If you want to hold your own in a conversation about Washington-area development, condo construction, transportation woes, or the new baseball stadium, bookmark these real-estate blogs and Web sites:

Started in January 2003 by a self-described “computer geek” named Jacqueline Dupree, Near Southeast DC Redevelopment tracks the changing landscape of the Southeast waterfront through photographs. She also scours newspaper articles, Web sites, and government reports for news tidbits about the neighborhood.

Beyond DC is run by a recent University of Colorado Boulder graduate with a degree in city planning. It focuses on new construction and transportation—you’ll see lots of posts about the planned Metro extension out to Dulles. Thumbnail photo galleries of area neighborhoods are a cool feature.  

Weichert realtor Dewita Soeharjono is behind Urban Trekker Blog, a good place to find area real-estate news and trends. Regular “Real Estate News Roundups” compile links to interesting pieces.

The tagline for DCMUD (DC Metro Urban Diary) reads “Washington DC is a flaming hotbed of property development, speculation, and good old-fashioned gossip. Let’s fan those flames!” The daily posts cover everything from construction projects to city council hearings.

DC Under Construction posts photos of ongoing construction projects, both commercial and residential. If there’s a massive construction pit in your neighborhood, this site can tell you what will eventually go there. And it’s also cool to watch the progress of construction sites across the city.

Did I miss your favorite blog?  Leave a comment to let me know about it.

Furniture and appliances always look smaller in a store showroom than at home. Several times I have bought something but had to return it once I saw how bulky it looked in my studio apartment.

If only I had known about MyDesignIn, an online home-design social network where members create blueprints of room layouts and drag-and-drop in photos of furniture and appliances. You select the photos from retailer sites like Pottery Barn with a bookmarking tool.

You can ask fellow members for feedback and suggestions and even let them access your layouts. So if your living room furniture doesn’t look right, invite people to collaborate.

Although membership is required to use the site, registration is free.

We all love Craigslist, but digging through the site's real-estate listings can be time-consuming and frustrating—the description says “close to Metro,” but when you click through you realize it’s actually “a short three-mile bike ride to the Metro.” Not exactly what you had in mind.

Housingmaps.com may have the answer. A Craigslist-Google Maps combo site, it takes all the housing listings in Craigslist and superimposes them onto Google Maps. You can zoom as close in on a neighborhood or street as you want and customize a search by price range and type, such as rentals, sublets, or real estate for sale. Clicking on a listing brings up a description complete with photos.    

Happy hunting!

Nosy neighbors were thrilled last February when Zillow.com launched. Founded by Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, the duo that created Expedia.com, Zillow.com uses square footage and recent comparable sales prices to provide free home-value estimates.

Zillow's success has led to copycat ventures, all of which have enormous voyeuristic appeal. Whereas real estate used to be a private matter, it's now possible to anonymously peak at the house values of neighbors, bosses, relatives, friends, and ex-boyfriends (not that I would EVER do such a thing).

Here's a round-up of some good sites for real-estate snooping:

Cyberhomes.com

Eppraisal.com

Homevaluecma.com

RealEstateABC.com

Reply.com

Zillow.com