Friday, September 02, 2005

An Overview and Rating of Free Real Estate Posting Sites

Since I first posted some listings for my folks on craigslist.org, it seems some other free posting sites have gotten ahold of my email and been so kind as to let me know about thier sites, so I thought I'd give a rundown of the pros and cons of these sites for folks.

craigslist.org - The presentation isn't real professional but ovverall I'd say it's still the best free Real Estate posting site I've found so far. The site functions very well, and it's intuitive. In addition, you can drill down to all the listings, which means that the search engines can find the listings. In addition, it seems to have some significant traffic, and it allows me to script my own html into the listing entry. Another nice feature of the site is that it doesn't make you register and then remember an ID/PW, but uses your email account for this type of purpose. You click the links in the emails sent to your email account to "confirm your identity". Who needs another password to remember. One of the real drawbacks is that it only lets you get as specific as the nearest major city, which leaves out a lot of geographic areas where Real Estate is concerned.
3 out of 4

craigsworld.org - This one had a real strange interface that I had trouble with. It seemd to want to keep refreshing. Also, when I posted, it came out strangley formatted and I couldn't figure out how to edit it. I did like that fact that it looked like they were trying to keep the posting simple, but I think this site needs work.
1 out of 4

myhouseinfo.com - This site had a real professional look butit assumes I'm the realtor, which creates some issues for me. It also doesn't appear to have any drill down capability, so its likely that the listings are hidden from the search engines. The other thing I noted was that when you search for listings, the resulting list gives no general description, so its hard to tell what you have untill you click on each one. This one might have some potential but I'm not sure of the traffic volume so far. It's worth keeping an eye on.
2 out of 4

local2local.org - This one also has some potential, but I think needs a lot of work. I posted, then had trouble finding my posting to view or edit it. I did find it to edit finally, but it wasn't real intuitive. The screen didn't seem to indicate my logged on/logged off status very well either. Still if they work on it this site might have some potential. It does have drill down capability, and this site also kept some stats on the number of views.
2 out of 4

One big drawback to all of these so far is that most of them that did have the drill down only catered to major urban cities.

3 comments:

James Haft said...

Dave,

Would love to have your opinions of our new site

www.uscondex.com

We are creating an open platform for Condo transaction, following an ebay type philosophy.

you can see my blog at everythingcondo.blogspot.com

James Haft said...

PS -- www.uscondex.com is offering free listings for their introductory period.

cheers,

jh

Anonymous said...

Us too, us too!