Rental Advertising Websites

[Kevin Dickson]

I was amazed at how Craigslist went from having 95% of the rental vacancy advertising in Denver to 5%.  This happened from about 2014 to 2016.  In Denver, it seems that all the business went to Zillow, but I'm not sure.  This trend leaves me with a few questions.

1.  Did this happen in your city yet?

2.  Did it happen in SF and NY?  Rental ads in those cities was always the biggest source of revenue for Craigslist.

3.  How do you advertise your rental vacancies in 2016?

4.  Is one site better for single family homes and another for apartment rentals?

5.  Zillow is clearly a much better tool for landlords and tenants, but there have been better tools for years, and no one ever even dented CL market share before.  So the last question is how did Zillow break through?

[Bill S.]

@Kevin Dickson basically Craig's List failed business 101. They did not police their product. About 1 to 2 years ago a large RE company started advertising to find renters for the high end large complexes. They spammed CL every day with hundreds of ads that turned up no matter how you searched. Their ads made searching CL impossible so the customers looked elsewhere to find their places. Zillow had a nice landing pad so that's where folks have ended up.