Real Estate Advertising

The days of morning coffee with the St. Paul want ads on the front porch have been replaced by morning coffee (or maybe Mountain Dew) by the computer!  As a result, methods of advertising real estate have changed drastically.  Properties are listed all over the internet on real estate company web sites, on individual agent web sites, on aggregator sites like Realtor.com, and on consumer driven sites like Craig's List. 

Craig's List and I duked it out this last week and I lost!  My website has a wonderful system of sending the listing information I input to lots of different aggregators including Oodle, Trulia, Edgeio, Yahoo classifieds, and others.  The very last step taken on my website listing input is to "manually" add my listing to Craig's List and Backpage.com.  Unbeknownst to me the consumes who use Craig's List have the right to zap your listing if they don't like it. 

This last week I added my listing to Craig's List through my website interface.   I was VERY impressed by how easy the website system was and how they copied content from my website and put it on Craig's List without any effort on my part.  About 12 hours later my e-mail received a notice that my listing had been deleted by other Craig's List members.  Being quick to make assumptions, I went through the content and made sure there were no borderline infringements on fair housing regulations and reposted.  Six hours later the post was once again deleted . . . not flagged, deleted!

Two strikes led me to the help forum where I found other Point2 participants had had their ads deleted as well.  The reason?  Craig's List is for consumers, not professionals.  When one's ad looks too good, it draws attention away from the consumer's ads and consequently someone was deleting the "professional" looking ads!  I guess I'm back to the drawing board and inputting the ad by hand.  I still have to declare that I'm an agent and what company I work for because of State regulations, but maybe, if there's less frill in the ad, the consumers will let me stay and play!  Afterall, my client is a consumer, too!

Comments

[Bonnie Erickson]

Karen,

I have been told just the opposite. I've been told that any user can delete the post. Since I started using vFlyers instead of Point2, they have not yet been deleted. Thank goodness. I don't see the difference as both provide code that the person posting to Craig's List has to cut and paste into the Craig's List system. Mark commented above that I personally must do the posting and I AM. Point2 just provides the code in the same manner that vFlyer does, but I have to make the entries in both cases. As my son said, a competitor might not like your flyer next to theirs, i.e., the same Harley being advertised next to each other, and they can delete your post. I very carefully followed all the rules and the Point2 stuff was deleted and the vFlyers were not. Go figure!

[Karen E. Rice]

My understanding is that it takes several users flagging a post before it gets removed.

[Bonnie Erickson]

Leanne, I'm positive there is an agreement between P2A & Craig's List. The problem is the consumer has the right to delete someone else's ad. Each consumer may interpret the rules differently!

[Leanne Paynter]

I would've thought that P2A came to an agreement with Craigslist before posting listings "on behalf of" agents with P2A sites. Have you contacted P2A directly about the issue?

[Mark Trufin]

I think your problem is this part of the process:

"...they copied content from my website and put it on Craig's List without any effort on my part."

If your website service does this, it plainly violates Craigslist's terms:

"Posting Agents are not
permitted to post Content on behalf of others, to cause Content to
be so posted, or otherwise access the Service to facilitate posting
Content on behalf of others."

In my opinion, this is stupid. But it's the law. Craig's law. What Craig wants you to do is create your own ad yourself.

You can use vFlyer, Postlets, Dreamweaver, Frontpage, or whatever you want to generate your HTML, but YOU must personally do the posting.

[Jef Rice]

Hi,

Here is a quick tidbit about Craig's List... If you read the Terms of Use for the site, it says that it will restrict any content from commercial sources. Furthermore, it puts your 'commercial' listing at the end of the page... And anyone who has ever used CL knows that the end of the page = death to listing.

I suggest using gumiyo.com. It is a brand new site dedicated to free classified ads - with a twist. It is targeted for mobile users.

Here is the story: As a listing agent, you can post your properties to gumiyo using a traditional web browser - or text messaging from your phone. Everyone knows how to login to a site and post an item there - so I will focus on the phone part.

1. take pictures or video of your property with your camera in your phone.
2. Send [email protected] a message with your pics/video attached. Include a title and description of the post.
3. We post your listing for free.

Then you can obviously login to gumiyo.com and add more detail to you listing - or use our newest feature called Gumiyo Blast. It will allow you to announce your listing to all of your friends by pulling in your contacts from gmail or yahoo mail systems.

When prospective buyers come to gumiyo.com - they don't browse or search like in the olden days... they create Gumiyo Alerts. These are like automated shopping bots that seek out items on behalf of buyers. When a watched item becomes available, we send a text message to the buyer on their mobile phone. Yep, I said it -- not their computer... We send it to the device they carry everywhere they go.

They can then respond directly to you via text -- so you get an immediate qualified lead to your phone -- OR -- they can use our 'Pass it On' feature. 'Pass it On' allows them to tell their friends about your listings too... I mean, the alerted person might not like the house - but they might know someone who does. So they send their friend a text message -- and the process continues.

No matter how it happens, the results are the same: You get well-qualified leads sent directly from your phone. And you keep from having to spend your entire day in front of a computer. Pretty nice.

Check gumiyo.com out - and if you have any questions, feel free to contact me directly. I would love to hear feedback on our offering.

P.S. We have more surprises concerning social advertising we plan on unveiling in the next couple of weeks - so keep yourself informed at blog.gumiyo.com

[Bonnie Erickson]

From what I have read, that is the case. I don't spend a lot of time on Craig's List so I don't follow it too closely. The community policed content is what has been discussed at length on Active Rain in the last quarter. Some AR participants thought the community should have the option of this much control on Active Rain.

[Maureen M.]

what a curse... looking good.

It is pretty bizare that the competition can delete. What if two unrepresented sellers list the same floor plan in a subdivision but one is $10,000 lower than the other? Does the higher priced have the ability to delete the competition?