CraigsList Examples

Hey Sam, Craig's List has been a big hit for me when it comes to rentals and lease purchases. I normally post an ad about a property I am leasing or an ad offering my services of helping potential tenants find a rental property listed by other agents. I receive tons of calls instantly. One thing I have learned is to keep the add short and sweet. You can go to craig's list's Atlanta home page and search my name Shon Smith and you can see the ads I've posted in the past. Hope this helps.

Shon Smith

Thanks for the question. I had the same one. Hope you found some of this helpful. I did

Hi Sam,

I’ve sold a couple of properties as a FSBO using Craigslist. I also have two properties now (both listed with agents) that I did my own Craigslist ads for. Obviously, any response I get goes through the agent.

Here are the links…
http://dallas.craigslist.org/rfs/699416915.html
http://mohave.craigslist.org/rfs/699429999.html
http://mohave.craigslist.org/rfs/651606005.html

I also scour the ‘Housing Wanted’ and ‘Real Estate Wanted’ and have found several buyers that way.

Sam -

Yes, on my personal website I can track who has come from Craigslist and on our visual tour software I can track CL clicks. On our franchise sites, from United Country, I have no idea.

I recieve at least a handful of emails from each posting and depending on the listing, a lot more.

I have no zero luck (that I know of) with our service ad offering our services to sellers and for auctions.

Nice tip, Steve!   I'll try that.

http://dallas.craigslist.org/rfs/716402628.htm

We get a reasonable repsonse to our postings.

good stuff.  just posted my listing on craigslist a week ago, still no response though.

Craigslist has completely changed the marketing in our office.  The rental division was placing hundreds of dollars in newspaper ads each week, and the return was questionable (at best).  With craigslist, we've slashed our marketing budgets & the quality of lead is much stronger!

Sam,

Hi.  My virtual tour tracks the websites that my tours were launched from. I am having  a hard time sending a sample tour, but I can tell you how to find it.  Go to St. Louis, Mo. Craigslist. click on housing.  Paste ad# CL Ad# 952013230 in the search field and you can go to my add.

I am currently running 44% with Craigslist, which is the #1 lead generator for my virtual tours.

Also, here is a link to my virtual tour stats and you will see what I am talking about.  Also you need to use Postlets.com to achieve professional CL ads and I can even add my virtual link tour right into the Craigslist Ad.  http://www.realtourvision.com/hit_stats.php?utl=RE-3465-878YH9-01

Hope this helps.  Ryan Gorman~Realtor~ and Virtual Tour Provider

Sam, here is a link to a listing I added to Craigslist today:  http://springfield.craigslist.org/reb/952972822.html

I get a lot more leads coming to my website by using Postlets inside of Craigslist.  It's easy!  It's free!  It stays on the web 30 days.  Best advertising I've ever had.

Sam, hope it works well for you.  Not only does it go on Craigslist, it goes on googlebase too.  Can beat that for being free.

Hello again Sam,  I have had great results w/ Postlets.  The basic CL photos show so bad that I will not post w/o an enhanced system like Postlets.  Rental owners and sellers seem to like it too.  -Mark 

I have used craigslists for all kinds of items, but I have never had any luck with real estate. I will not spend any more money on craigslist, because I haven't ever gotten a response from one yet.

How does one spend money on CraigsList?

I have picked up investors buyers and sellers directly from Craigslist.  One investor had 50+ closes in a 2 year period. 

As mentioned above Postlets links to other sites, is easy, and free. 

Craigslist works great for rentals.  I'll attract renters for my investors and pass it on to my investor.  I get nothing out it, but the unit is now making money, freeing up capital for the investor to purchase another property. 

I can't say an actual listing has been sold via Craigslist, but they go out there.  I have recieved offers from Nigeria, Dubia, and other countries from the Minister of Finance trying to make purchases and will buy all Real Estate but can only wire the money to my personal account.  So you have to filter through the crap. 

I wish less Realtors would not use Craigslist, then I get all the business!  It really is a free, powerful, online media outlet.  Much like anything, it is not guareenteed, but free. 

I have never gotten a call about a craigslist home for sale. I quit doing it, but have been meaning to try it again.

I post a different listing everyday. But the quality of leads from CL has been somewhat low. But since it is free, I use it as much as possible.

We have had good responses from Craig's List on listings and rentals. However, be forewarned. On one of our rentals, someone "hijacked" our ad, put different pictures in it and were trying to rent it out for $550 less than it was actually renting for. I can't tell you how many calls we got on that one. Someone got a yahoo address and said they were me and were in Africa and needed them to wire the money to them there. It was all a big scam, but we got several calls at the broker's office asking what was going on and I had to deal w/phone calls for several weeks (while hubby was in the hospital) about this. We told CL what was going on and they yanked all the ads. Yahoo said they were taking appropriate measures and we had to get the FBI involved since it involved wire fraud and all this other business. Other than that, we've had really good responses with it. The broker nor anyone else in our office had ever heard of this type of thing going on.

"Hijacking is common".....watermarking photos is the answer.  I post 3 to 5 rental listings DAILY early in the AM 7 days a week using the FREE postlet (www.postlet.com) HTML with link to my website IN the ad description. 

This procedure DRIVES prospects to my website which has more photos, floor plans, area maps, applications, etc.

 I no longer advertise in local print media as their on-line issue was poorly designed AND maintained....now I SAVE $$$ and actually get property/client prospects from my CL listings...using postlets puts listings in about 8 other sites - loads of exposure

Postlets is one of the best ways to post to CL AND Postlets syndicates your listings to other real estate web sites.