Is there any service that will monitor MLS/others and look for houses and apartments in a price range, within a commute distance (by train or car or bus), and with internet access?
That wi be highly dependent on the MLS available in your area. There is no universal or standard MLS and the information collected can vary wildly between cities and counties.
Monitoring that checkbox if available would require access to an rss feed for the listings. Or potentially a realtor to set up an email alert (no contract would be required)
I would build that - but I have a feeling that the realty companies would prevent and/or fight you for scraping their data. Anyone have experience with that that can offer some info/advice?
I've scraped MLS for personal use to build a very similar tool (draw on a map, highlight new listings, able to hide listings), and had no technical issues at all, just a simple curl call. This was a few years ago, though.
I think I'd pay for a service that did this.