- Joined
- Sep 7, 2007
- Messages
- 8
Hello, as many of you are aware Craigslist can be a great resource for finding tenants. It can be a good addition to several of the other more popular rental websites out there. Over the past several months I`ve posted 2 ads and found a tenant for a condo apartment within a couple of weeks. So in this respect it was great.
HOWEVER, I experienced 3 negative aspects of using craigslist:
1) An increase in spam - minor but to be expected. Next time I will use a different email account.
2) False inquiries in my property for rent:
I received many bogus interest emails from everywhere from the UK to US to Nigeria. Many of these people who express interest in your property for rent are simply trying to eventually get you to agree to exchange money in some way without ever meeting them in person. Personally this was the first time I encountered this so it took a little while to catch on.
I discovered a few tell tale signs that will tell you if you`re wasting your time:
- the person will ask you some `canned` questions about the property that you have already answered in your `solid oak` vacancy posting
- the person will attempt to provide a lot of false personal information in lengthy emails
- they will NEVER provide a phone number even if you ask repeatedly (this is how I learned of the scam)
- if you don`t respond to their messages, they will eventually leave you alone.
Keep asking for follow up information and to talk in person. In the end your due diligence pays off and they will give up and find someone else. Also don`t get angry. If you send an angry email (even if it makes you feel better), expect to be inundated with spam from then on.
3) Someone `stealing` my ad:
In my opinion, this was the most frustrating. I spent a few hours writing a great ad and posting it on several websites. Someone then took my ad word for word, picture for picture, and changed the contact details and lowered the rent to something ridiculous per month.
Fortunately I was contacted by no less than 6 individuals who discovered the duplicate ads. Some of these people had been in contact with the malicious individuals and had been asked to forward a security deposit somewhere outside the country. Thankfully no one I talked to had been ripped off. One individual even accused ME of being a scammer! After I offered to show them the place in person they came around.
BTW it took a long time to get the malicious posting removed. Only after numerous complaints to an `administrator` is a malicious ad removed. And then the next day it could simply be reposted.
Using the website can be great as a source of potential tenants. However you should at least be aware of some of the risks involved. As a result of these experiences, I will not use craigslist again for finding tenants.
If anyone else has any good or bad experiences with craigslist, please post them. Hopefully if you are aware of these warnings, you can avoid some of the problems that I encountered. Cheers.
Brian Creed
HOWEVER, I experienced 3 negative aspects of using craigslist:
1) An increase in spam - minor but to be expected. Next time I will use a different email account.
2) False inquiries in my property for rent:
I received many bogus interest emails from everywhere from the UK to US to Nigeria. Many of these people who express interest in your property for rent are simply trying to eventually get you to agree to exchange money in some way without ever meeting them in person. Personally this was the first time I encountered this so it took a little while to catch on.
I discovered a few tell tale signs that will tell you if you`re wasting your time:
- the person will ask you some `canned` questions about the property that you have already answered in your `solid oak` vacancy posting
- the person will attempt to provide a lot of false personal information in lengthy emails
- they will NEVER provide a phone number even if you ask repeatedly (this is how I learned of the scam)
- if you don`t respond to their messages, they will eventually leave you alone.
Keep asking for follow up information and to talk in person. In the end your due diligence pays off and they will give up and find someone else. Also don`t get angry. If you send an angry email (even if it makes you feel better), expect to be inundated with spam from then on.
3) Someone `stealing` my ad:
In my opinion, this was the most frustrating. I spent a few hours writing a great ad and posting it on several websites. Someone then took my ad word for word, picture for picture, and changed the contact details and lowered the rent to something ridiculous per month.
Fortunately I was contacted by no less than 6 individuals who discovered the duplicate ads. Some of these people had been in contact with the malicious individuals and had been asked to forward a security deposit somewhere outside the country. Thankfully no one I talked to had been ripped off. One individual even accused ME of being a scammer! After I offered to show them the place in person they came around.
BTW it took a long time to get the malicious posting removed. Only after numerous complaints to an `administrator` is a malicious ad removed. And then the next day it could simply be reposted.
Using the website can be great as a source of potential tenants. However you should at least be aware of some of the risks involved. As a result of these experiences, I will not use craigslist again for finding tenants.
If anyone else has any good or bad experiences with craigslist, please post them. Hopefully if you are aware of these warnings, you can avoid some of the problems that I encountered. Cheers.
Brian Creed
