Working Smart in Real Estate

According to Redfin, craigslist draws more attention to your listings than any other site.

I haven’t had much success with craigslist finding buyers for my listings but I know it has sold homes. One almost client wanted to wait over a holiday weekend to list while he did some repairs. We spent way too much time configuring the flier and base colors to get maximum effect. We spent more time on minituae and I was willing to do it because he was going to be an involved seller.

The funny part is while we were working on all of these colors and planning, his basic Times-Roman lettering in craigslist with one picture grabbed a buyer. He sold it the day before the listing went active.

Two points were made. One is that craigslist works and that you don’t always need flashy advertising. Here is how I work craigslist.

I use postlets.com for other reasons too but it is perfect for craigslist. There is a spot where they have html code that you copy and just paste into the body of craigslist. Fill in the header, price and location and you are done with a quality online flyer.

Vflyer.com can be used on craigslist as well but I am not as familiar with it.

I will also make a separate listing in the basic style on craigslist. Some don’t like the slickness of the flyer. This way you can get attention by both.

Create a craigslist account and when they expire you can easily relist them. If the information has changed such as price, then you have to redo the craigslist ad.

In a future post I will talk more about Postlets.

photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/acloudman/