HotPads Daily :: The Official Blog of HotPads.com

Hot Pads: Beauty in Glass and Steel

2009-07-14T17:58:14-04:00

The Henman House utilizes stainless steel and glass panels to create a truly unique home in Malibu, CA.

The horizontal steel lines makes for a truly dramatic entrance:

This unique living area combines great views with cathedral skylight ceilings and limestone tiles:

The kitchen features a black diamond fireplace and a limestone deck that connects right to the family room for easy entertaining:

The master bedroom is airy and open with wonderful views of the mountainside:

And with 16.0 acres of manicured lawns and mountain top and coastal views, you have plenty of beautiful views outside as well.

With a house and grounds like this, you can bet on a constant supply of visiting friends. Luckily, there is a helipad (that doubles as the driving range) to ensure that their trip is an easy one.

See more of the Hottest Pads on HotPads

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Hot Pads: Incline Village

2009-07-07T11:22:46-04:00

If I could choose the setting for my ideal home, it would definitely include a sandy beach on an expansive body of water, lush and mature wooded surroundings, and majestic mountains just begging to be skiied.

Actually, it would look almost identical to this 9 bedroom, 7100 square foot home for sale in Incline Village, NV:

Inside, I like it clean and contemporary with nice lines, soaring ceilings, and large windows. Almost exactly like the home that happens to sit on this beautiful property:

And throw in separate guest quarters in a beautiful guest house, and even a great conference center to conduct business, and I'd say this home is about as close to perfect as you can get.

And did I mention it's on the beautiful Lake Tahoe, close to all the skiing and snowboarding and water sports and everything else you could desire?

If you can't afford to buy a place like this just yet, don't worry... There are lots of hotels near Tahoe and even vacation rentals in Incline Village!

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Hot Pads: Dana Point Beauty

2009-06-30T18:37:27-04:00

As you know, we have a ton of beautiful, unique, interesting homes for sale on HotPads. And, sometimes, I come across a listing that makes it hard for me to choose which aspect to even highlight on HotPads Daily. This 6 bedroom, 7.5 bath home for sale in Dana Point, CA left me debating which of all of its amazing parts was the best!

This view:

This office:

This bedroom (that is so immense that a king-sized bed is dwarfed):

This bathtub:

This indoor-outdoor pool:

Luckily, if this house was yours, you wouldn't have to choose... you'd get to enjoy it all!

See this home and the rest of the priciest and most luxuriest homes for sale on HotPads in the Hottest Pads Search!

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Introducing The HotPads Mobile

2009-06-24T11:06:56-04:00

As I mentioned, the HotPads team spent last weekend in Austin, TX celebrating the wedding of one of our engineers. However, that wasn't the only joyous occasion in Texas! Imagine our delight when David Peters (another fabulous engineer) arrived from DFW driving his mother's newly "wrapped," HotPads logo-ed, beautiful car!

Check out this bad boy!

Here's some of the HotPads crew with the official car (after a delicious burrito at Freebirds, I might add)

Special thanks to Mrs. Peters for wrapping her car with the HotPads logo. We've said it before, but the support of our friends and family means the world to us. We are so lucky to have such great parents who are willing to go the extra MILE for us- as evidenced by this amazing car! So, if you happen to live in Dallas /Fort Worth area and see the HotPads car, give Mrs. Peters a little wave!

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Austin, TX Should Be Called Awesome, TX

2009-06-22T11:59:37-04:00

The HotPads Team just got back from an amazing weekend in Austin, TX where we were celebrating the marriage of our engineer Keith and his wonderful bride Tina. Many of us had never been to Austin (and I had never even been to Texas!) and we all fell in love with the city where we ate all the BBQ and Tex-Mex you can imagine and took in the local live music scene.

If you are looking for an awesome city with an unparalleled creative flare and live music every where you turn, Austin, TX really is a great place to be.

And then, of course, I found my dream home when searching homes for sale in Austin, TX:

This 4 bed, 8,425 square foot home is close to night life, the river/lake (I still don't understand that), and downtown jobs. And... look at this place!

Even if you are happy living where you are, Austin is definitely a place to check out. Maybe you could time your visit with Austin City Limits, which is one of the biggest music festivals in the country. (Check out this year's line up here) This year, it is taking place October 2-4, but hotels are selling out quickly! Find your hotel in Austin, TX soon!

Hot Pad: "Living on a Grand Scale"

2009-06-08T11:19:50-04:00

Sometimes, the listing description really hits the nail on the head, like this house for sale in Rochester, NY. "With 14,000 square feet of living space and over 20 rooms, this is a home for living on a grand scale."

Here's a bit of a tour: First, you step into this grand foyer with sky-high ceilings,

and head off to the kitchen fit for a chef.

Then, you can either enter the formal dining room

or the grand atrium

You head upstairs, where you continue through grand hallways,

and into the master bedroom fit for a king.

This beautiful 8 bedroom, 7.5 bathroom house will run around $15,000,000.

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HotPads on AWS

2009-06-01T10:15:16-04:00

The team over at Amazon Web Services asked me to give a talk on the architecture behind HotPads at their event on Wednesday. It was a great event, with about 300 people showing up in Crystal City... Amazon's first event for the DC area.

If you're a current AWS customer, considering using their products, or just a general technology enthusiast, check out my slides below. If you've got another 15 minutes, the whole talk is on video.

HotPads abandoned our managed hosting in December and took the leap over to EC2 and its siblings. The presentation has a lot of detail on costs and other things to watch out for, so if you're currently planning your "cloud" architecture, you'll find some of this really helpful.

Here is a copy of the slide show:

AWS Start-Up Event DC 2009: HotPads On AWS

You can watch the presentation below (thanks to Jimmy over at East Coast Blogging for the video):

--Matthew Corgan, President of HotPads.com

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Own a Piece of '80s History!

2009-05-26T18:13:57-04:00

Few movies epitomize the 1980s like Ferris Bueller's Day Off. And now you can own a piece of the movie that has maintained it's cult classic status for over two dozen years!

Cameron's house is up for sale for $2.3 million... the same one that housed the 1961 Ferrari 250GT California that Cameron's dad spent three years restoring, and Ferris Bueller spent one day destroying.

Even if it wasn't for the movie, this property designed by A. James Speyer and David Haid is noteworthy. The simplicity of the design and the way it is fully integrated into its surroundings truly is remarkable.

Inside, the open floor plan and incredible floor-to-ceiling windows present an airiness that is unparalleled, as you are inside, while surrounded by nature.

See the whole listing in Highland Park, IL here.

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