I've used Craigslist this way, most of the public rental ads for our area were either for shitty places or overpriced. There's nice to very nice apartment complexes in our area but they are very expensive, have on-schedule yearly rent increase, and charge pet fees.
So I posted an ad on Craigslist in "housing wanted" saying our approximate credit score (750+ each), employment history, what we were looking for, and our income plus a little intro about us personally to give it a little flair.
Since we were pretty much ideal renters I was hoping landlords of the nicer properties would look there first to avoid the sketchy unqualified riff raff that may reply to public ads and waste their time. The other thing is we have/had cats, so the pool of apartments was smaller for us so it made sense to "target" landlords who were open to pets.
To my surprise, got a bunch of really great hits! Way better places at better prices than the public ads. Apparently landlords actually DO browse Craigslist for qualified candidates. Some even congratulated us on being responsible and "ahead of the curve."
Ended up renting from someone found that way. Total cost was $0.
I imagine Facebook groups would work just as well or better. Facebook groups weren't really a thing last time I was apartment hunting and I've owned for a while now so I won't ever get to personally try it out. Facebook groups work way better than Craigslist for both buying and selling stuff and, in general, a local Facebook group I belong to has been insanely useful for a lot of different things.
> I was hoping landlords of the nicer properties would look there first to avoid the sketchy unqualified riff raff that may reply to their ads and waste their time
How did you manage to convey that? By virtue of posting an ad or you went ahead and specified in the ad how high educated, high income, and overall awesome you are?
My wife and I recently moved and, while we ended up somewhere we like, there was one particular street right next to our old house that we always wished we would be able to get a home on. When we talked to other neighbors that were thinking about moving, we found out that we were far from the only ones eyeing that street. Unfortunately, people there rarely sold and, when they did, the homes got snapped up quick.
We thought about sending letters to see if somebody wanted to sell to us without going the realtor route, but we never did. Facebook ads would have made it way easier. And a service where we forked over $50 to run some ads plus $250 as a reward and pushed a button would have been better still.
> We thought about sending letters to see if somebody wanted to sell to us without going the realtor route, but we never did.
We actually just bought a house doing this exact thing. There was one particular area that only had about 30 houses in it and they don't come up for sale that much. Since we really wanted to move this year, we sent letters to the houses we'd want in that area. To our surprise, out of the dozen or so letters we sent, four people responded that they were considering selling and a few others still replied thanking us for the letter but weren't going to sell.
As long as you are willing to be flexible with move date, this works out great for both sides. The sellers avoid agent fees, which at 5 or 6% can be significant, and the annoyances of showings and open houses. It also gives the sellers certainty of sale so when they go to buy another house, they don't have to deal with contingency offers.
I get letters like this sometimes (people looking to buy either in our area or specifically our house). This only works when you personalize your letter to the specific house, and sell yourself - i.e. not send a generic 'call me if you want to sell', because then people will assume you're a realtor. I don't think this can be made into a service - it only works when you're clearly not a business and when you can show that you've put in the effort.
> We thought about sending letters to see if somebody wanted to sell to us without going the realtor route.
My parent sold a place that they had after a letter was put in their letter box, and we were on the brink of doing this when we were looking for a place. Before we did I walked into work and said “anyone know of a place for sale in xxx that would be interested in a private sale?” Someone did, and we bought it. No real estate agents involved.
>We thought about sending letters to see if somebody wanted to sell to us
I heard this is something real estate investors do for people who are in the foreclosure process. Offer a all cash short sale and see if the home owner and bank bites to prevent going through foreclosure. I don't know if it's actually true or not, or how common it is.
There is a service that offers this, it's called "Craigslist" and "Facebook groups."
There really is a ton of stuff you can do with Facebook ads. I got one of my first jobs out of college by running ads targeted to the types of companies I wanted to work for.
I did a similar process when house-shopping. Setup ads for a particular location, specifically targeting people who owned in the area, but who lived out of state.
1. Personal FB ad copy
2. Landing page w/ more information about what we were looking for.
3. Contact form
I received ~5 leads from people willing to sell their house with about $100 in ad spend.
Do people even look at Facebook ads? On my browser they rotate through every ten seconds, so even if I was interested the chance that I could read them and decide to click on them before they go away is nil. In he past, every single Facebook ad I'd ever clicked on turned out to be click-bait (the photo/ad had nothing to do with the link.) The ads are on a currently on a part of the screen I have mentally blocked out. The idea that you can hit 100% of the Facebook users in a neighborhood is laughable.
I'm not sure if it would matter, if you were just doing this as an individual once or twice, but it's worth noting that in New York State, at least, this would be an illegal transaction, unless the tenant referring you to their landlord happened to be a licensed real estate agent. The definition of brokering a transaction according to state law, for which you must be licensed is that you're facilitating the transaction "for another" and "for a fee". The $250 dollar reward, therefore makes this an illegal act on the part of the existing tenant. Laws might well be different in other states obviously.
OP here. Where I live, it’s legal to broker one transaction per year without any special license. Not sure about the legal situation in New York, though.
There was a case on YouTube where a (sort of) satirical YouTuber Reactor (a fake over the top reaction channel) used a cut up footage of GradeAUnderA hating reaction channels as an ad on GradeAUnderA's own videos to direct people to Reactor channel as part of a scheme to bait GradeAUnderA (a 2-3 million subscribed channel) into attacking his small channel (1-2 thousand subs post these antics, much more later after the scheme came to light) to "expose" him for being a bully, starting fights (despite saying how he hates them and how they ruin YouTube and attacking people who are having them) and so on.
This made me curious about whether there are good lifehacker-style articles/listicles/compendia of creative personal uses of targeted advertising platforms. Not sure if the answer is no, or if it's just one of those ungoogleable ideas.
Neat. I have an friend-of-a-friend who is trying to find a dog-friendly flat in southish London and I've been trying to find a way that they could do this.
Someone in my coworking space is building a platform that does this in New York and Boston. It incentivizes departing tenants to be involved in the leasing process by cutting out the real estate agent and giving a portion of that fee back to the departing tenant. They've just launched: https://www.cribdilla.com/
> Couple looking for 2-bedroom in neighbourhood. Budget: $1250.
God I need to move out of the bay area. I pay $1000 more than that for my one bedroom in Oakland. And it's not even in a great area... And it's not even that nice of an apartment!
Great idea what this guy did. Maybe I should give it a shot.
That’s amazing. Jerusalem is considered the most expensive real estate market in Israel (apart from Tel Aviv), and $1250 is definitely on the high side for a two bedroom.
It's important to note here that this will only work in densely populated areas. Otherwise FB will make you expand your radius / criteria to fit a large enough population potentially rendering the ad useless.
People with mobility issues sometimes prefer not having to use stairs or elevators. Not implying that's the author's preference, but that's what I've seen in the RE arena.
OP here. We have twins, and many apartment buildings in Jerusalem lack elevators. Also, I’ve found quality of life to be markedly improved once we’ve moved to a garden apartment! :-)
[+] [-] astura|7 years ago|reply
So I posted an ad on Craigslist in "housing wanted" saying our approximate credit score (750+ each), employment history, what we were looking for, and our income plus a little intro about us personally to give it a little flair.
Since we were pretty much ideal renters I was hoping landlords of the nicer properties would look there first to avoid the sketchy unqualified riff raff that may reply to public ads and waste their time. The other thing is we have/had cats, so the pool of apartments was smaller for us so it made sense to "target" landlords who were open to pets.
To my surprise, got a bunch of really great hits! Way better places at better prices than the public ads. Apparently landlords actually DO browse Craigslist for qualified candidates. Some even congratulated us on being responsible and "ahead of the curve."
Ended up renting from someone found that way. Total cost was $0.
I imagine Facebook groups would work just as well or better. Facebook groups weren't really a thing last time I was apartment hunting and I've owned for a while now so I won't ever get to personally try it out. Facebook groups work way better than Craigslist for both buying and selling stuff and, in general, a local Facebook group I belong to has been insanely useful for a lot of different things.
[+] [-] treis|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vidoc|7 years ago|reply
How did you manage to convey that? By virtue of posting an ad or you went ahead and specified in the ad how high educated, high income, and overall awesome you are?
[+] [-] ada1981|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dbatten|7 years ago|reply
My wife and I recently moved and, while we ended up somewhere we like, there was one particular street right next to our old house that we always wished we would be able to get a home on. When we talked to other neighbors that were thinking about moving, we found out that we were far from the only ones eyeing that street. Unfortunately, people there rarely sold and, when they did, the homes got snapped up quick.
We thought about sending letters to see if somebody wanted to sell to us without going the realtor route, but we never did. Facebook ads would have made it way easier. And a service where we forked over $50 to run some ads plus $250 as a reward and pushed a button would have been better still.
[+] [-] ssharp|7 years ago|reply
We actually just bought a house doing this exact thing. There was one particular area that only had about 30 houses in it and they don't come up for sale that much. Since we really wanted to move this year, we sent letters to the houses we'd want in that area. To our surprise, out of the dozen or so letters we sent, four people responded that they were considering selling and a few others still replied thanking us for the letter but weren't going to sell.
As long as you are willing to be flexible with move date, this works out great for both sides. The sellers avoid agent fees, which at 5 or 6% can be significant, and the annoyances of showings and open houses. It also gives the sellers certainty of sale so when they go to buy another house, they don't have to deal with contingency offers.
[+] [-] matwood|7 years ago|reply
I've gotten letters like that before and always assumed they were Realtors trolling for clients.
[+] [-] the_mitsuhiko|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roel_v|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lostlogin|7 years ago|reply
My parent sold a place that they had after a letter was put in their letter box, and we were on the brink of doing this when we were looking for a place. Before we did I walked into work and said “anyone know of a place for sale in xxx that would be interested in a private sale?” Someone did, and we bought it. No real estate agents involved.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] chasedehan|7 years ago|reply
I do like the idea of targeting people through Facebook although I feel like the physical letter would pull more at the heart strings
[+] [-] astura|7 years ago|reply
I heard this is something real estate investors do for people who are in the foreclosure process. Offer a all cash short sale and see if the home owner and bank bites to prevent going through foreclosure. I don't know if it's actually true or not, or how common it is.
There is a service that offers this, it's called "Craigslist" and "Facebook groups."
[+] [-] ttul|7 years ago|reply
Noooooo.... please don’t ruin this... Let’s keep it for us nerds, okay?
[+] [-] samsolomon|7 years ago|reply
https://solomon.io/how-to-get-a-job-interview-tomorrow-using...
[+] [-] hackathonguy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lukethomas|7 years ago|reply
1. Personal FB ad copy 2. Landing page w/ more information about what we were looking for. 3. Contact form
I received ~5 leads from people willing to sell their house with about $100 in ad spend.
[+] [-] iagovar|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baking|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] balls187|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fcbrooklyn|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackathonguy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tgsovlerkhgsel|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perl4ever|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericst|7 years ago|reply
I knew a guy who tried to use them as a dating service, I guess the lack of incentive is what made his trial fail...
[+] [-] jcl|7 years ago|reply
http://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-...
(I was kind of disappointed that the "hypertargeted ad" link in the article went to a generic how-to article instead of that post.)
[+] [-] FRex|7 years ago|reply
What a quagmire, I know.
Good video summarizing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9_6UCkxu_U
[+] [-] BugsJustFindMe|7 years ago|reply
He should have offered a cash bribe. That would surely have worked.
[+] [-] abathur|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackathonguy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afarrell|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] J_Sherz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] methodover|7 years ago|reply
God I need to move out of the bay area. I pay $1000 more than that for my one bedroom in Oakland. And it's not even in a great area... And it's not even that nice of an apartment!
Great idea what this guy did. Maybe I should give it a shot.
[+] [-] hackathonguy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nsx147|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IshKebab|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aj7|7 years ago|reply
It ain’t broke don’t fix it.
[+] [-] phyzome|7 years ago|reply
Fuck you, Medium. I want to read a blog post, not sign a contract or marry you.
[+] [-] Qub3d|7 years ago|reply
Works like a charm!
[0]: Example - https://i.imgur.com/YfUKdjT.png
[+] [-] kentt|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nottorp|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] supergirl|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] _RPM|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zebraflask|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackathonguy|7 years ago|reply