Expired craigslist ads

[Josh L.]

I'd been keeping an eye on Craigslist listings for comps, and I would save and copy and paste that info on my computer.

But, my computer crashed so I lost all that info. I can't even really remember that information because I thought I was saving all that info on my computer.

I'm not a gadget guy so I figured that stuff is probably lost.

So, is there any way I can go back to Craigslist and find all those expired listings again?

Or, is there another source I could use to find old and expired listings to serve as my comps?

[Bill Gulley]

An expired listing doesn't give you any information as a comparable property, in fact it's bad data as it didn't sell and owners advertising their properties are usually overpriced anyway.

On the public side of the MLS, go to the stats data, it should give you the % of the asking price that properties sold for on their system. Say they sell at 92% of the asking price.

Then look to sold properties, it usually shows what the asking price was but the sale data is blocked from the public side. But they just told you the average sale was 92% of that asking price.

You pull comps for appraisal purposes with the actual sale data and use three of the best, sometimes more.

But since you don't have the actual sale data you need to pull more comps, say 8 or 10 and use the average result for each one, in this case at 92%. With more comps you increase the validity of your estimation. Use those and you will have a good basis to estimate a market value on your subject property.

Much better than looking at expired listings that didn't sell. :)