They
say the bubble is bursting, but you would not know it by the over 22,669 active
housing listings from the past 7 days alone in the Nairobi section on
Craigslist.com. Real estate sales are alive and well on Craigslist with the
real estate sales section as the #3 most popular category, more agents are
realizing the power and value in using Craigslist to reach new buyers.
What is Craigslist?
Started
in 1995 by Craig Newmark, Craigslist.com was initially created to help people
find affordable housing in San Francisco. Craigslist is now the most popular
online classifieds website in the world, with over 10 million visitors monthly
and growing. Craigslist features 300 available cities across 35 countries for
posting. Everyday people come looking to buy, sell and lease property. Agents
can capitalize on this traffic by posting free ads and answering ads seeking
homes. It truly is a real estate agents dream marketing tool.
Getting Started
Agents
interested in using Craigslist can get started by visiting the Craigslist.com
website and deciding which cities to post in. Research other ads in your area
to identify areas in need of property listings and to find out what your
competitors are posting.
The Kenya Real Estate section of Craigslist is divided
into sections to direct traffic to specific areas including rooms & shares,
apartments/houses for rent, housing swap, office & commercial, parking
& storage, real estate for sale, sublets & temporary and vacation
rentals. Posting an ad is free except in New York City, which just started to
charge Kshs.900 for rental listings. Once you know where you’d like to post,
create either single ads for hot properties or a combination ad listing all
your available properties for that area.
Creating an Ad
Ads
are simple to create and are mostly text and require no design or HTML
experience. Your ad should be descriptive with contact info and supporting
photos. Images of your properties will increase response by over 200%, so be
sure to include shots that really help sell the property. Images can be easily
uploaded during the posting process.
Posting Your Ad
Posting
an ad is as easy as picking your city, choosing the correct category, selecting
post at the top right corner and entering your listing into the form. You will
need to come up with a good title to get people’s attention. Your ad should
also feature key phrases that people might search when looking for your property
region, style, features, etc. Once you enter your text into the form, upload
your images. You will need to enter an e-mail address, but you can choose to
keep it anonymous. Then you simply submit, review and wait for the link in your
e-mail to publish.
Reposting, Multi-Posting and Auto-Posting
Once
published, your ad will remain on Craigslist for 7 or 45 days, depending on
your selected city. Staying on the first page is very important but you are
only allowed to post the same ad in more than one city every 48 hours. However,
to get around this rule, create multiple ads for the same property, but
slightly different text or use a different e-mail for each ad.
To succeed you
will need to re-post at least every 48 hours as new buyers come to the website all
the time. To automate the re-posting process you can use an underground
auto-posting service or purchase a script. These programs are not sanctioned by
Craigslist but are widely used and highly effective. Keep in mind that buyers
are turned off by spam, so be sure to only post your property once a day, per
city and category. This ensures you get great placement without coming off as
desperate or overly aggressive.
As
you can see using Craigslist is a very easy and affordable way to reach new
customers. This is only the beginning of what agents can do to promote
properties on Craigslist. As Craigslist becomes even more popular it is the
agents who not only use the service, but can effectively navigate and exploit
creative out of the box ideas that will win.
Visit
www.kenyan-real-estate.com for more
tips on real estate sector.
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