Your Rankings
Every property starts at 1500 points. Each vote moves points from the loser to the winner, and an upset win moves more. These rankings come from your votes only and are saved in this browser.
What's this?
Each matchup shows two real properties that were for sale when they were featured in the Adaptive Reuse Corner section of College Towns. Look around the outside in Street View or Satellite, then use Step inside to see the full listing, interior photos included, on the real estate site.
Featured issues:
- Haunted House Tour
- International students weigh midterms
- Why are universities cutting child care?
- My own students' slaughter bear story
- The War Department's university witch hunt
- In defense of palm trees
Listings change. A property may have sold or changed price since it was featured. Distances are straight-line estimates.
📬 Suggest a property
Know an old church, school, mill or bank for sale that deserves a second life? Send it in. Suggestions are reviewed before they appear in the voting.
🔧 Builder
This page is only for you. It opens when the address ends in #builder and isn't linked anywhere. Anything you change here is saved in this browser until you click Download updated app at the bottom.
📬 Suggestions inbox
Option A: through the visitor's own email. Enter the address that suggestions should go to. When a visitor submits, Gmail or their email app opens with the suggestion filled in, and they press Send. The address is disguised in the page so it's harder for spam bots to collect.
Option B (optional): sent automatically, no email app needed. If you set this up, it's used instead of Option A. Suggestions are emailed to you through Formspree, a free form service. To turn it on, create a free account and a new form, then paste the form's ID or its endpoint link (https://formspree.io/f/xxxxxxx) here.
✅ Approve a suggestion
Each suggestion email ends with an approval code starting with ARC1:. Paste it here to fill in the Add a property form below. Check the details, give it a name and description, and click Add property. To skip a suggestion, just ignore the email.
Turn on in-app Street View
Satellite and map views work right away. To show Street View inside the cards, Google needs a free Maps Embed API key. The Embed API has no usage charges.
- Go to console.cloud.google.com/google/maps-apis and sign in.
- Create a project and enable the Maps Embed API.
- Under Keys & Credentials, create an API key and paste it below.
The key is saved only in this browser. Before you put the site online, restrict the key to your website's address in Google Cloud.
➕ Add a property
🔧 Builder tool: lock in exact locations
This looks up each new property's exact address, finds the nearest Street View photo and aims the camera at the building. It costs about one lookup per property and skips any property already locked in. Visitors then get Street View through the free Embed API.
It needs the Maps JavaScript API and Geocoding API enabled on your key. They only need to be on while you run this.
🎯 Fine-tune a view
If a Street View shows the wrong building or the wrong angle, pick the property, turn the camera to face it, and save. Saved views are marked 🎯 and are never changed by Lock in locations. (✅ locked in · ➖ satellite only · ⏳ not looked up yet)
- Open this address in Google Maps ↗
- Drag the yellow person onto the street, then turn until the building fills the view.
- Copy the whole link from your browser's address bar, not the Share button's short link.
Or, for any photo including user-uploaded ones: click Share → Embed a map → COPY HTML and paste that. - Paste it here and click Save from link.
💾 Save into the file
New properties and locked-in locations are saved in this browser first. Click below to download a new copy of the app with everything built in, then replace your old file with it. That copy is the one to share or put online.