I recently put my old house in San Jose up for rent. I wrote the original ad copy on Zillow together with tons of high-res pictures. Zillow published the ad on Zillow, Trulia and HotPad. I also put the same ad on Craigslist. But CL doesn’t allow as many pictures. I was forced to cut down on the number of photos.
So my ad was on Zillow, Trulia, HotPad and Craigslist. Which channel do you think I got the most responses?
The answer is Trulia. Followed by HotPad and Zillow. To my surprise CL was dead last. And the quality of the leads were the worst from CL too.
Has it been the experience of other landlords? Craigslist’s UX is absolutely horrible. I am glad another stronghold of CL is finally fading. Trulia is owned by Zillow now. This leads me to think Zillow’s rent estimate is probably pretty accurate. I set my asking rent to be $100 less than Zillow’s estimate. In hindsight it may have been too low. I was flooded with inquiries.
Well, my niece’s boyfriend was looking to move from So Cal and he looked on Craigslist. Too many scam ads!!! People wanted him to send money first and then meet up for keys/paperwork. Yeah, right. Naive boyfriend almost went for it. Kids…
What do you expect from suburb grown kids??? Green grass, swimming pools, and no crime. Gotta grow up in the concrete jungle of the city. No cell phones. Take the public bus across town to a public school by yourself. Learn to deal with drunks and druggies on the bus. Hey, that’s what I did. And we wonder why the kids are so soft these days??? Don’t do it, parents!!!
I had a similar experience. I started with Craigslist and ended up lowering the rent some due to lackluster response, but interest went through the roof as soon as I posted on Zillow.
