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August 25, 2005

Thursday Morning Craig - Not

fence
Sackett Street Fence. Photo by Alexis Robie
Has anyone else found Craigslist getting more and more useles for townhouse sales? Maybe free listings are not particulary useful when dealing in items that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. (It seems to work a lot better for apartment rentals, though Craig has publicly discussed the tough issues in that arena too). Clearly the end-user (buyer) benefits from the self-selection that occurs when the New York Times charges a fee to list a property. Less "noise", more quality. Is there anyone out there who found their townhouse through Craigslist? Is there anything Craig could be doing to improve the property sales section?




Posted by Brownstoner at 8:29 AM | Comments (16)
Categories: Craigslist

Comments

Photo by Mike?

Posted by: Alexis at August 25, 2005 9:29 AM

craig needs to make 'em pay (through the nose). i pay craigslist to advertise for employees, and am happy to do so.

i am NOT happy to wallow through garbage ads in the craig real estate section.

Posted by: suzy at August 25, 2005 9:44 AM

we found our townhouse through craigslist and i think we got it cheaper because of that. it was a fixer upper listed by a small broker.

Posted by: Anonymous at August 25, 2005 9:46 AM

Ditto, 9:46. We found our fixer upper through craigslist, listed through a small broker. Really feel like we got a deal because of that.
Also sold our last place on there, it was a perfectly smooth process. I must say we really preferred the type of buyer who responded to our craiglist ad, as opposed to those who responded to our NY Times ad. Those who responded to the NY Times ad were really just coming to do an open house walk through, not actively looking at the market, whereas the craigslist responders were really looking, ready to buy, younger folks, money in hand, ready to sign a contract, asap. I don't know why that is, don't know if it's always the case, but it was the case for us.

Posted by: Anon at August 25, 2005 9:59 AM

As a broker, craigslist should charge brokers for listing properties. A small fee will definitely cut back on all the crap that people put up. $15 or $20 would do just fine. Many agents keep relisting the same properties over and over again under different headlines. All those shoddy properties on Craig's don't give it a good image to the more sophisticated buyers.

Posted by: Mike at August 25, 2005 10:05 AM

Yes, it would be fantastic if someone could come up with a way to filter out all the crap you have to wade through to get to a good listing, i.e., all those listings that say they're in one neighborhood, but when you call to see it, turns out it's really not.
But the free aspect is what's so great about it. It's a free community board! To charge for the listings would really change the spirit of it. Although all of us capitalists have coopted it for our own purposes, it retains it's community spirit. Viva La Craig!

Posted by: Anon (9:59) at August 25, 2005 10:15 AM

community spirit my ass. before craig started charging a paltry $25 to list a help wanted ad, that section was loaded with envelope-stuffing come-ons. i agree heartily with mike; charge money and you'll see the garbage posts disappear.

Posted by: suzy at August 25, 2005 10:26 AM

i agree with anon. if you're put off by cragslistings then don't look, just know that there's always some good stuff that you'll be missing out on. in my mind the process takes some work and weeding through the crap is part of it. viva la craig!

Posted by: Anonymous at August 25, 2005 10:30 AM

When we were looking, I spent countless hours obsessively sifting through craigslist listings, and was eventually driven into the arms of Corcoran.

CL is so frustrating - repetitive, shoddy listings from bottom-of-the-barrel brokers. However, it did give me a good sense of what was on the market in our price range. It always felt like chasing rainbows, so I'm glad to hear other people's success stories.

Charging for listings might get rid of some of the jokers.

Posted by: clinton hillbilly at August 25, 2005 11:04 AM

I found my (rental) apartment through craigslist--though it did require alot of wading through dodgy listings for places that either don't exist (bait and switch to get you hooked into a broker) or are nowhere near what they are described as. My friends who just bought an apartment in clinton hill had the same issues and ultimately went through a broker but appreciated being able to learn the market through craigslist.

Posted by: BRC at August 25, 2005 11:04 AM

This is known as the tragedy of the commons. Communal resources are available to everyone, so everyone has an economic incentive to use them; but no one has an equal incentive to husband the resources.

The only known way to effectively fix this problem is to set up access fees which simply decommonize the resource.

Posted by: iceberg at August 25, 2005 11:57 AM

I totally agree that agents and brokers should pay, in order to weed out the scammers. As an agent myself, I would love to stop hearing from people about the "$1200 Williamsburg 3 bedrooms" that they keep seeing on Craiglist -- I tell them they don't exist -- half the time they end up coming back and half the time they end up living in Bushwick. That said, most customers off of craigslist are pretty dodgy themselves -- I'm so tired of people calling in response to my posts in the Fee Broker section, always, to ask "and this is no fee, right?"

Posted by: Larabell at August 25, 2005 12:14 PM

The bottom-feeding brokers are a huge problem. When they post an ad they are really just trying to get the phone to ring. Whether or not the particular property they advertised is for sale or even exists doesn't really matter. Of course, you've figured that out.

We've had a lot of problems with that on PropertyShark as well, which is why we force all brokers to advertise specific properties and to explicitly state their relationship to the property (owner, exclusive listing broker, co-broker, etc). It helps, but we still get people posting completely bogus stuff just trying to draw attention to themselves. I spend a lot of time reviewing, investigating, and deleting ads. I also make a fair number of phone calls to brokers threatening to delete their accounts.

It's a huge pain in the ass. I think part of the solution needs to include the state revoking a few licenses. There are laws about fraudulent ads, they just aren't enforced.

Posted by: Matthew Haines at August 25, 2005 12:35 PM

I've had great luck as both a renter and rentee with the "by owners" rental section of cl. Maybe, though, when you start talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, you simply can't be so sanguine. Perhaps one little hoop to jump through (small fee) would make it more useful for serious parties and less attractive to scammers.

Though I have to disagree with the poster who lamented the people you get through the Times listings that just do a "walk-through." Of course you don't want endless strangers traipsing through your house, but looking is legitimately part of the process.

Posted by: Anonymous at August 25, 2005 12:37 PM

I think the common thread here is the diligent broker. Those who feel they found a good deal through criagslist are happy with the broker, not the advertising medium. Those who were "driven into the arms" of the brokers were happy with there transactions and obviously needed the expertise of a broker (large or small) to make the process wok smoothly for them.

Posted by: Benjamin Colbert Beggs at August 26, 2005 1:00 AM

I bought my house via craigs list directly from the owner and got a great deal. You have to sift through a lot of crap but there are some gems; And when they appear they disapear the next day so you have to be vigalent about checking everyday.

Posted by: Anonymous at August 26, 2005 9:53 AM

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