Listing yourself or using an agent

[Theodore Tasoulas]

Hello BP,

We recently tried to list our apartments ourselves instead of using an agent, but we could not get enough applicants so we went back to the agent. 

We spent over a month listed on multiple national sites like realtor.com, apartments.com, even Craigslist. We had several people interested, but never paid the application fee. We even emailed interested applicants to complete the process, over 40 I believe.

In the last few weeks since the agent took over, there have been more completed applications and now a couple of showings. Looking at the applicants, they are coming from the same sites we had listed earlier. 

Granted we were listing in February, but it is only March now. Any ideas how the agent is getting more leads than we were when it appears he is using the same channels?