Craigslist?

Not being a realtor, I can't help with your question.

From a handyman perspective, we find most craig's list people want it cheap, and want it now ... they think you're going to drop everything and run out there to give a free estimate. Even worse, if you negotiate a price on the phone, they are likely to try & renegotiate price when you get there so we don't bother much anymore.

With Craigslist I am getting more spammers and advertising for other commercial interests than true buyer or seller leads. Plus I am now getting requests to "authenticate my craigslist account" from non-craigslist e-mail addresses!

Mark - I don't know if I should bother putting listings on craigslist or not. I'm not getting any response at all.

Mark, I still use Craigslist, but it does attract ALL the spammers.  Yeah, that authenticate crap hits all of us.  I ignore it.  I also seem to get an awful lot of messages saying that the ford F-150 Pickup ad I placed has been flagged.  I don't even OWN a Ford.  lol

Thing is, I do still get a couple of legitimate inquiries, but you just have to watch who you respond to.

Mark:

I have been extremely successful with Craig's list, I get some great leads every now and then, but its a great format for expanding your customer base.  Thanks for raising the question.

Stephen

Mark,

Even though Craigslist has become tedious because of all the spam, I do believe that buyers look there.  I haven't gotten any leads from it, but I think it does drive traffic to listings.  I have stopped including my email in the body of the HTML posting and it has cut the spam by 98%. It probably is less effective than it used to be 8 or 10 years ago, but I still think it is necessary.

I thought it was just me, so we share and we learn. I have not seen the response that I was getting this spring and it has slowly drifted away ever since. The one thing is there are so many more pro's using it and instead of offering specific properties some have gone the 'LOOK WHAT I CAN DO FOR YOU' type adds, we may have shot ourselves in the foot and killed the free goose as well. I was using it mostly to announce open house's and even those responses are down, still a great place to air them out for some to see. On the spam thing I report every hit I get and the spam has become non-existent.

I have been using Craigslist for years.  in the early 2000's I had a huge response.  As the market changed and it has become saturated I have had much less activity on it.  I still think it's worth the time to post because it is a free tool and all you need it was great lead :)  Cheers!