Advertise on Craigslist?

Question

Not sure where to put this but I've been working on an apartment for the past 5 months and it's finally ready to rent and I'm new to this renting thing.  Need to advertise and was looking for opinions.  Newspapers seem extremely pricey for a line or two and some people have told me to put it on my local Craigslist?  Who thinks thats a good idea or not?  Thanks.

Nicole Williams · Answer

Brian, 
In addition to Craigslist, try using backpage.com or bigbrick.com I have used both to find tenants at one point or another. Backpage has a great feature that you can pay (depending on location) $1.20 and it will repost for you for up to a ten days. Also you mentioned backround/credit checks, www.instantbackgroundchecks.us is a great resource. Hope that helps!

Jon Klaus · Answer

Craigslist works for me.  Signs work well, too. Read up on qualifying tenants in the landlording forum. A good tenant will start you on your way to building wealth. A bad tenant will cost you more than you can imagine and might make you hate real estate investing.

Brian K · Answer

Thanks for all the info.  CL and a yard sign it is.

Andrew Jones · Answer

CL has worked great for me. Make sure to post pictures.  You can use photobucket.com or another free hosting company.

Jon Klaus · Answer

Karen, what price range was the house?  The one where Postlets found the buyer?  Was it a local buyer?

Karen Margrave · Answer

I don't advertise for renters, but for buyers. I picked up a buyer on a spec house we are building from postlets.com which posts ads to like 100 different sites, including Trulia - and that's where the buyer responded from.  Craigslist seems like it's bombarded with agents that use programs to load it with all their listings, so put something original in your heading, and try to use a different style than the agents that do that use. Have you looked at Ebay classifieds? Good luck!

James H. · Answer

I think posting on CL is just a given. I used it for my rental, but it was interestingly not very effective. CL may not be very effective depending on your demographic. My tentant pool is not very internet saavy.  A yard sign got 95-98 percent of the interest generated for me.

Also, the challenging thing about CL is the glut of reposted adds from everybody else. Count on posting a new add or reposting your existing add 1 to 2 times a day for it to not fall off the face of the earth.

If you're willing to part with the money, you could also hook up with some apartment locating services.

Jon Klaus · Answer

Welcome to BiggerPockets, Tony La Belle

Tony La Belle · Answer

Brian
Craig's list is good. I have gotten many renters off Craig's list. and the price is right. No one reads papers any more.

Ann Bellamy · Answer

I use a sign in the yard, and Craigslist.  I also create a flyer in postlets.com which automatically posts to zillow, hotpads, etc.  By far, the most responses I get are from Craigslist.  I then use the code from postlets to create a nice ad for Craigslist.

Print in the local newspaper is a waste of time and money.

Advertise on Craigslist?

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