2 Listings and a bunch of buyer leads this year.

Craigslist is awesome for driving traffic to our listings. We utilize multiple ad formats and refresh ads on a regular and frequent basis. I can monitor click-through activity through the backend analytics on several of my sites, and a vast majority of folks looking at our listings and registering on our site come from Craigslist.

Vito Boscaino
Managing Partner / Realtor / MBA
Help-U-Sell North High Realty
Columbus, Ohio 43214
614.447.3050 office
http://www.servingcolumbus.com
http://vboscaino1.point2agent.com
http://northhighrealtyhelpusell.blogspot.com
http://northhighrealty.helpusell.com

I think Craigslist can be a valuable tool to help get your sellers home in front of many people. In fact, I set up personal home websites for my sellers with ListingDomains.com and they have a program to make it simple to post a very professional ad on Craigslist. The major benefit is the fact that ListingDomains has a visitor statistics page that actually tracks the amount of unique visitors to the homes personal website AND it shows where the visitors are finding the home website. I would say that 80% of the traffic I receive on my sellers personal home websites is directly from Craigslist and this is information that I can email my seller, so they can personally see actual statistics and know that I am doing my due diligence on marketing their home. You can't get that kind of statistical information from print media!

I've been a Craigslist user for about 9 years now, because I used to live in San Francisco, where it all started. The people from the Bay Area are very proficient users of Craigslist and I actually get emails and phone calls about my listings. I now live in Sacramento and Craigslist has been getting much more attention here over the past few years.

I have yet to actually sell a home that has been advertised on the site, but I have met a few buyers.

Keep using the site, just as another "tool" in your marketing portfolio!

Carie

Hi Jennifer:

I personally don't like that either. I think the best thing to do is to call the listing agent and give them your feedback. When the realtor hears that the consumers don't like that, they will change their approach.

Sylvia

Hi Ginger:

I think it depends on where you are looking. In the Bay Area, Craigslist is actually organized quite nicely - which Trulia should follow suit - the area is organized as north bay, east bay,etc and then it is by city within north bay. You can also sort by price range.

The advantage is that we can put open house on Craigslist which drives buyers to the open house. In addition, you are only allowed to post it every 7 days, so the listing will be fresh.

I checked craigslist in a few other parts of country, I do have to agree that they are not as organized as the ones in the Bay Area.

Sylvia

I get web hits but no phone calls off Craigslist. I think it is eliminating unproductive phone calls. However, as more and more realtors use Craigslist, I think the value is going down. It is becoming kind of a disorganized version of Realtor.com.
Don't get me wrong - I think Realtor.com is the most valuable website out there. It's just that I think that Craigslist is losing some of its differentiation.

I've had some success with driving traffic to my website as well as getting traffic to my listings. I would not say that I can attribute any closings to it, though. It's a very small part of what I do for sellers, but it's still included.

I have had success with Craigslist also. It is a free tool to advertise which is always a good thing.

Yes, got a sale from that, and several leads for homes in Marin; but that's after a few years.

Craigslist is very big in Marin though.

Sylvia

Been using Craigs list for the past 2 years. Was very effective for Asbury Park investment properties, although nothing came out of it except a bunch fo dead leads. As for other properties, no emails no calls.

Congrats to you!

Don't forget the craigs list flake factor.... Use it, but beware of the time wasters....