Management companies, individual property owners and legitimate real estate brokers can quickly and easily clean up the mess that the apartment locator services that YoChicago calls bedbugs have made of Craigslist. Renters will thank them for doing so.
Renters need a way to search Craigslist for property ads and avoid wasting their time on the tens of thousands of fraudulent, bait-and-switch and come-on ads posted by the bedbug locator / finder services.
Advertisers can achieve that goal by making a few simple changes to the way they write their Craigslist ads.
How can that be accomplished? First, begin your ad title with a phrase that makes it clear who the advertiser is:
Advertiser-owned Advertiser-managed Exclusive listing
The bedbugs can only use these phrases in the very rare instances where they have an exclusive listing on an apartment or own or manage it. Misuse will place their licenses in severe jeopardy.
Second, include the exact address of the property in the ad title. The bedbugs are unlikely to copy this because a) they don’t want renters going directly to the property; b) they don’t want renters to see how repetitive their ads are; c) they don’t want renters to see how few options are actually available in some neighborhoods; d) they don’t want landlords to see that they’re misrepresenting availabilities and rent rates; and e) they don’t want landlords who won’t do business with them to see that they’re advertising a property without authorization.
Including the type of advertiser and exact address of a property in the ad title will result in more renter views even when renters haven’t yet learned to search for Advertiser-owned, Advertiser-managed and Exclusive listing properties.
Third, add the following language at the end of your Craigslist ad:
Make your apartment search more efficient by searching Craigslist for Advertiser-owned, Advertiser-managed or Exclusive listing properties.
YoChicago will be promoting this concept to landlords, management companies and legitimate brokers. Help make Craigslist searches more efficient by spreading the word, and by giving us your comments on how to make the concept more effective.
Another option would be to lobby Craigslist to charge a modest fee for posting, say $5 or $10. It’s not enough to keep a private poster from posting, but its enough that the rental agencies couldn’t afford to post 50 ads per day.
I know they have have done this in certain markets in the jobs section to deal with this exact problem. Craigslist claims that while there is generally initial backlash, in general everyone is much happier with the better quality of ads.
I agree; I would think that $5 per post would take care of the issue. It would have a huge impact.
I wonder why Craigslist hasn’t already done this? It would greatly improve quality and they make some money at the same time! win-win!
You can see much more on the topic of Craigslist charging for ads in the comments on this post from August of 2009.
Craigslist has been charging for rental ads in New York for some time, and has in place the technology to categorize ads.
CL will eventually get around to charging for rentals in Chicago – but only when it maximizes revenue from doing so.
I’ve long been of the opinion that Saint Craig Newmark (who I’ve met and lunched with) is a disturbed individual who takes perverse pleasure in encouraging fraudsters so that he can swoop in and save his community from them. Saving the community, of course, puts lots of money in Craig’s pocket. How the media ever swallowed this guy’s shtick is totally beyond me.
Ha! I one of the first posters on that thread too. I must have lost track of it shortly thereafter.
Independent of what anyone thinks of Craig himself, Craigslist has established itself as THE place to go for a number of things and will continue to be successful in these categories for the foreseeable future. If lining his pockets is what it takes to make these services (more) usable, then so be it. Hell, isn’t that the American Way?
Gosh I wish Criagslist would institute even a $1 per posting charge for adding listings. Even that would stem the posters that add hundreds per day.