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Craigslist losing its juice in the RE segment.

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Is it me or are others finding that craigslist is loaded with spammers posting the same property two and three times in the same day. I will admit, 2-3 years ago an ad for tenant buyers would bring in almost 50 interest prospects in one day, now the rent to own or owner financing ads barely generate 2-3 suspects with multiple post (twice a week.).

 

I mainly think that realtors have saturated craigslist to the point that you can't find the jewel properties you once could and they are turning buyers off big time. buyers in my opinion went to craigs to find for sale by owners and knew that f they wanted a listed property to contact an agent.

 

i kind of wish they would bring it back to for sale by owners since realtors have countless places they can use to market their properties.

 

well i guess i can't expect too much from a free for all site.

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I guess I'm lucky, craigslist never generated any interest from buyers for me. In my area kijiji is still mostly FSBOs, but that doesn't pull many buyers for me either. Plain old signs are still by far the best.

 

The one thing craigslist does still work for is getting pure options. I can still pull down 5-10 options a day from one city. But that's because pure options with with FSBOs and agents.

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The declining results we are receiving from Craig's List has been noted here previously. In my area at least, and in many others too, it has become an extension of the MLS with page after page of Realtor's listings. I assume this has chased away many potential tenants and buyers who were going there because they wanted to deal direct with homeowners. Instead, we now have Realtors marketing their properties to other Realtors. :unsure:

I have three properties I'm trying to fill right now, and barely a response in three weeks from my listings there.

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I can still pull down 5-10 options a day from one city.

You're getting 5-10 signed option contracts a day? Cool! How many end up being profitable?

But that's because pure options with with FSBOs and agents.

"with with"? I have no idea what you meant to say here.

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I assume this has chased away many potential tenants and buyers who were going there because they wanted to deal direct with homeowners. Instead, we now have Realtors marketing their properties to other Realtors. :o

I always thought the MLS was how Realtors were supposed to market to other Realtors :unsure:

What's going to stop other Residential Real Estate For Sale sites from suffering the same contamination?

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I always thought the MLS was how Realtors were supposed to market to other Realtors :unsure:

It is. But Craig's List isn't the MLS. My rant being that they have poisoned their own water. As potential tenants and buyers come to this same conclusion, they begin to look elsewhere.

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I always thought the MLS was how Realtors were supposed to market to other Realtors :unsure:

It is. But Craig's List isn't the MLS. My rant being that they have poisoned their own water. As potential tenants and buyers come to this same conclusion, they begin to look elsewhere.

Right. And where those buyers go the Realtors will follow. When they start spamming hundreds of posts a day they're going to poison the alternative sites too if the site admins don't stop them.

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I always thought the MLS was how Realtors were supposed to market to other Realtors :unsure:

It is. But Craig's List isn't the MLS. My rant being that they have poisoned their own water. As potential tenants and buyers come to this same conclusion, they begin to look elsewhere.

Right. And where those buyers go the Realtors will follow. When they start spamming hundreds of posts a day they're going to poison the alternative sites too if the site admins don't stop them.

I agree. Right now, I'm getting a better response from Kijiji and, to a lesser degree, Backpage. But I have seen Backpage begin to change as it, too, gets take over with Agent listings. Kijiji not yet, but talk to me in three months. . . :o

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I believe I may have already mentioned THIS SITE

here on the forums.

 

Unlike Craigslist, this site isn't free to to list available homes.

However, the gold is in the list of folks that already have

a house listed on that site.

They're already open for a lease purchase...all you have to do

is offer your services and get paid.

Just click on the Homes Available link to the left on the site.

Or, just click on the link in that last sentence I just typed. ;)

 

Maybe someone can utilize this site and put some deals together.

 

Hope this helps.

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After searching on the "real estate for sale" section of Craigslist today I noticed an unusual amount of Realtor listed postings. I got so fed up that I sent an email to each of the agencies. This is what I wrote them.......

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(In response to your Craigslist postings)

Just wondering if your agency was going to post EVERY listing they have on Craigslist?

 

I'll let you in on a little trend that we have noticed.....The more listings Realtors post on Craigslist, the more buyers/investors who wanted to talk directly to the homeowner, leave the site. It should not be an extention of the MLS.

 

If people want to sort through pages and pages of listed homes they can do it on the MLS

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

It will be kinda interesting to see what type of response I get. ;)

And this is my new posting to stand out from spamming Realtors (it needs to be tweaked a little).................................

 

"We are a Bluffton/Hilton Head based company actively acquiring homes that we need to fill on a Rent-To-Own basis and you don't have to worry about Realtors who want to get you Pre-Approved.

 

Unlike most Realtors, we assist people who DON'T have perfect credit or 20% downpayment move into a home now.

 

Give us a call for more information about our Lease Option Houses."

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I believe I may have already mentioned THIS SITE

here on the forums. . .

Jason, (or anyone), have you used this site personally? I'm thinking of giving them a try with a few properties I need to fill. Wondering what your first hand experience may have been.

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(In response to your Craigslist postings)

Just wondering if your agency was going to post EVERY listing they have on Craigslist?

 

I'll let you in on a little trend that we have noticed.....The more listings Realtors post on Craigslist, the more buyers/investors who wanted to talk directly to the homeowner, leave the site. It should not be an extention of the MLS.

 

If people want to sort through pages and pages of listed homes they can do it on the MLS

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

i would like to know what type of response you are getting. i tried sending craigslist something sort of like your email to the realtors agencies but i still haven't heard back from them. i don't think craigslist is worrying about losing traffic from potential home shoppers as long as they have realtors and other professionals on board, but since i have sent the email, they are requiring an account in my area to post real estate services. only if they use that same mentality to post homes for sale we might be ok.

 

maybe we all should post our concerns to craigslist and they might try to cut down on the same realtors spamming their site.

 

let me know what you think

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also earlier this morning i read a post somewhere else that some people are paying mechanical turks to place their ads on craigslist in order to get around spamming the system with their ip. if people are getting this creative it might be impossible for craigslist to regulate their site.

 

while typing this i am remembering back when someone posted they are using software to post their ads as well and this software has codes to keep you from classifying them as spammers and they can post the same message all day long. their ads stick no matter what you do because the system sees the ad as a regular poster. i see some people are using the software to place their seminars in the real estate for sales section and those ads stay there the entire length of regular ads. now if that isn't spam i don't know what is. hopefully craigslist organizes their stuff to bring it back to the way it was pre 2006.

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