If you’re a walkable-neighborhood maven, you’ve probably seen Walk Score—a great way to rank the accessibility of goods and services in just about any neighborhood in the US or Canada.  And if you’re a transit-app aficionado, you probably know about Transit Score, which ranks neighborhoods by how well they’re served by transit.

Now, the good folks over at Walk Score have built an apartment search smart bomb. Their new free service filters online ads to find apartments in your price range that give you an easy commute to work! You choose the number of bedrooms you want, how much you’re willing to pay, your preferred way to commute (transit, bike, car, or foot), how long you’re willing to commute, and the Walk Score of the neighborhood you want to live in. And up pop apartments and house rentals that fit the bill!

When I played with the transit search function, what I found most interesting was the distribution of apartments that were accessible by transit.  If you work in downtown Seattle, parts of Kenmore and Bellevue give a quicker transit commute than some residential neighborhoods within Seattle city limits. In particular, much of Southeast Seattle is more than a half hour away from downtown by transit. So families looking for an affordable home with a less burdensome commute might find this apartment search to be a godsend.