BiggerPockets

I hope not. There's enough crap on CL to sift through as it is. I sprained my finger one night flagging posts! :wink:

My thoughts exactly, but I figured I'd get some other opinions.

People do it all the time with bandit signs, they create a fictious property, and put .50 on the dollar! MUST Sell Quick - CASH.. You will get buyers that way. You can also do it on craigslist, I posted a fake property a while back, and got about 4 people that I later added to my list, so I don't see anything wrong with it. But it's like Chris said, they usually come to you if you have a good deal already under contract.

No. Just get someone's permission to help them market their property. Then post real properties on CL to build your buyers list. It has the same effect, and you could actually make some money and be taken seriously.

I agree that the best way to find buyers is to get a great deal under contract and then market that deal. If it is a great deal, you will find buyers and they will compete to be the first one to get the deal from you.

If I am the buyer and find out the wholesaler has used deceit to get me on his list, I will have difficulty trusting him on other "real"'transactions.

Why do you have to do that just to attract buyers?

Well, I hope not coz I know Craigslist is a reliable source of ads if you want to sell or promote just about anything.

Instead of creating fake ones, why not create real ads so as not to mislead other buyers

I recently read a book by an author who was encouraging readers to put up newspaper ads for properties that they didn't own or have a contract for in order to build their buyer's list. In no time I had a website up eagerly attempting to advertise properties that I didn't own to consumers. I wanted to make sure that I wasn't doing anything illegal so I spent several hours researching FTC rules and BBB guidelines. Before I knew it, I was trying to convince myself that I wasn't actually trying to bait consumers. So I'm really glad I found this forum. After reading these posts, I knew that if kept advertising my "properties", I would feel really petty. I stopped my ads and changed around my website to let viewers know what was really going on. I realized that it's not about taking this sub-par method of building your buyer's list and pushing it to its legal limits. The point is to understand how unprofessional and unethical this method is to attract and build relationships with buyers. It's a deal and we are both trying to make a profit. But we need to interact with each other in all honesty, sincerity, respect, and trust. This bait advertising creates a bad representation for legitimate wholesalers who aren't luring their customers and are being labeled as deceitful and untrustworthy. It's not fair or worth it to be dishonest. There are cleaner, more fun ways to make money.

Posting fake ads in my opinion isn't very ethical. I know I wouldn't want to be deceived and I know the people I've built relationships with wouldn't appreciate either.

I think people focus to much on finding buyers. Got Deal, Got Buyers, No Deal, No Buyers.