in practice, finding a worthwhile apartment on craigslist is like finding a faberge egg in a garbage bag full of barber shop hair trimmings: possible, but probably not worth the effort given the odds.
there are so many wonderful ways you can take your potentially worthwhile rental listing and just fuck it up beyond all reason. here's a helpful list!
1. Include no pictures. look. this is not the goddamn newspaper want ads. you can put pictures in FOR FREE. nor is this a particularly challenging proposition in this, our super modern steam age. there are only two reasons why you wouldn't put pictures in your ad: laziness or knowledge that your apartment is the number one cause of death by rat feces.
and the latter suggests that you are MORE than willing to trick people into coming to look at the apartment and then hope they are too stupid/intimidated to turn you down. asshole.
2. Stretch the truth about location. this is perhaps a new york centric problem, but once landlords figure out what the up and coming neighborhoods are, they will push those boundaries as far as they think possible. if i have a house in haiti, i don't get to say it's in the dominican republic because that's just next door.
even better than this is a stupid ass trick where the lister will just plug a bunch of random neighborhoods in at the bottom that have ZERO to do with the place. example: i am selling my used catheter, but i know that's not going to get a lot of interest. clearly the solution is to put "BMW Playstation Coach Rolex Fruit By The Foot" at the bottom. who does this work on???
3. Put up terrible pictures. in fairness, i have to put this below 1 and 2 because it's not deceptive. but god is it dumb. about 75% of the apartment photos on craigslist are either useless (hey, check out this bathroom cabinet! look, ceilings in all rooms! a picture of the space shuttle!!) or horrifying. if you are the landlord and you go over to snap some pics for your spiffy-new ad, but you find that your tenants have:
a. left dirty clothing all over the oven
b. drained a goat of all bodily fluid in the bedroom
c. placed a pyramid of empty KFC buckets on the windowsill
d. A and C
COME BACK LATER. DO NOT JUST SAY "FUCK IT" AND TAKE PICTURES ANYWAYS.
look. we all accept that there is some level of horror which previous tenants in our homes may have visited upon the premises. but we choose to move on in blissful ignorance. when you show filth and terror, you ruin that for us. you rob us of our innocence.
to prove my point, here is the WORST picture i have ever seen in a craigslist ad. at first it won't disturb you, but look closer...
that's right. a shirtless man with roughly 30% of his BARE ASS hanging out, just a-swifferin away. god help whoever takes this place.
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2 comments:
See, I would have immediately found the homemade blackout curtains to be more disturbing than bare-ass swiffering. A man needs to be comfortable, but unless you're expecting the Blitzkrieg or the DEA, you do NOT need blackout curtains.
I can only assume that was put up after complaints about his bare ass.
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