With just over 2,500 ads, State Street Properties isn’t Craigslist’s most prolific apartment ad spammer, but it ranks among the worst of them and shares some verbal tics with the typical Craigslist rental spammers.
Landlords and management companies don’t typically resort to superlatives to describe their apartments. If you see an “amazing” or “awesome” or “stunning” or “incredible” apartment advertised on Craigslist, there’s a very high probability that the ad was placed by a rental service a/k/a apartment locator a/k/a apartment finder. Save yourself some time and skip the ad.
Sam Kahn of State Street Properties had 123 ads active on Craigslist mid-day yesterday. He found 110 of them to be “amazing.” Sam’s a total newbie, so you might cut him some slack for being so easily amazed – but would you want to call a rookie who wastes your time with spam and shows so little discernment? The prevalence of complete rookies among their ranks is just one of the many things Chicago rental services won’t tell you as they bray about their expert staff.
You won’t find any apartment ads on Craigslist if you search for Sam Kahn. His name only appears in the Contact link and he’s identified in the body of the ads only as “Housing Sam SSP.” You won’t, in fact, find any individual names in SSP’s Craigslist apartment ads, but you’ll find some in the Contact links.
Name in ad / Name in Contact link
HOUSING NICOLE SSP / Jill Allen
Reighly Post / Reighly Schoo
Renee Rentals SSP / Erik Carlson
Houses Michelle SSP / Todd Stefanik
rentals ssp crystal / Ryan Flint Raider (actual name Ryan Flint Rader)
Housing Sam SSP / Sam Kahn
housingsspmike / Mike McGrath
This type of evasiveness is often a sign that Craigslist has identified a previous account for the same user as a spammer, and blocked it.
A sure sign of a spammer is random text in the body of the ad, and you’ll find that in more than 800 SSP ads with the phone number of (866) 573-9844.
Another tip that you’re dealing with a spammer is an atypical presentation of a phone number. You’ll find 100s of SSP ads with these numbers: 630-3320-262; (773) 4534-809; (708) 4166 309.
Tip: We’ve recently written several posts about Chicagoland Properties Group‘s more than 4,500 ads in the Craigslist spam-o-rama. You can spare yourself having to sort through these ads and the more than 2,500 from State Street Properties by typing the following string into the Craigslist search box:
– “Chicagoland Property Group” – “State Street Properties”
In the screen cap at the top of this post SSP says that “The last thing we want to do is waste your time … ” Help SSP meet that goal: flag its Craigslist spam, and don’t let them waste your time or anyone else’s.