Working for an apartment leasing company requires constant market research.  While I was browsing an industry website this morning I stumbled upon an article detailing how prospects shop around for new apartments. The article was great until I read the header titled “Get Off Craigslist.” My jaw dropped, but I kept reading. The author stated that posting ads to Craigslist is a waste of time and that no one reads the posts anyway.

As someone who has done my fair share of apartment lease-ups, I completely disagree.

Why wouldn’t you post Craigslist ads?

• It’s easy

Speaking from experience, nothing is easier than posting a Craigslist ad. It takes 3 minutes tops. Write a quick blurb, include a few photos, and click post. Of course you can add bells & whistles like links and videos to increase the “stickiness” of your page, but it’s not required. All you really need is the apartment description, pictures and your phone number.

• People do search Craigslist for apartments

Below is a breakdown of the leases obtained from a class A property in a tier one market where we are currently working.

As you can see, Craigslist accounts for almost half of the leases and is more than twice the amount secured by the second leading source. Imagine all the leases this community would’ve missed out on if the leasing specialist hadn’t been posting on Craigslist!

• All it costs is your time

Craigslist does not charge you to make an account on their site nor do they charge to post. Therefore, it should only cost you a few minutes a day to upload your ads.  Once you’ve created a few unique ads most of your work is done! From that point on, you can just click ‘renew’ and the time to post decreases even more!