Earlier today I spent about half an hour searching Craigslist apartment ads for apartment rental / finder / locator services –we call them bedbugs – that haven’t yet made it to our do-not-call list. I was prompted to do that by a landlord’s having told me that he was aware of at least 20 new services. It’s the time of year when they spawn like – well, bedbugs.
In that half-hour I identified and visited the Web sites of eight new bedbugs to add to our list. I’ve updated the list with these names:
- Apartment and Home Seekers
- ChiLife Realty
- Chicago’s Property Shop
- Live Well Chicago Realty
- Premier Chicago Rentals
- Spaces Property Group
- Vesta Preferred Realty
- We Know Realty Corp
It was dizzying to go through Craigslist rental ads one at a time. I sampled about 100, and during the time I was doing that 100s more were added. About 98 of the 100 ads I sampled were placed by rental services, one by a broker, and only one by a landlord.
I can see how many bedbug companies can be bad, but I had a good experience with Downtown Apartment Finders. Make sure you are honest about what you’re looking for and that you give yourself time to see the different places. There are agents at DAF that are knowledgeable and will go the extra mile. I didn’t see that they charged me more that anyone else. Make sure that you know how experienced your agent is before you work with them. DAF helped me out a lot!
Sigh. Another commenter with a screen name that matches only someone in California and an e-mail address that doesn’t resolve to anything real.
And a renter who got to know multiple agents at DAF and knows what other renters were charged.
Magical knowledge – or planted lies?
And then we have this comment – trashing DAF – posted an hour earlier from the same IP address that Jennifer posted from.
What kind of game is afoot here? Trying to set up YOChicago for a charge of bias against positive commenters? It’s the kind of game that bedbugs play.