I posted my For Sale home on craigslist and did get several showings/inquiries and they were serious buyers.

Ended up selling to someone that did not find it on craigslist. But I highly recommend craigslist as ONE of your several methods of marketing a home. You have to use as many methods as you can, as each method can bring potential buyers.

Yes, it(the ad) does get buried. I only got calls within 1-2 days of the new posting. Once it gets buried, most folks ignore it. Soooo, you post about once a week. I always tweaked the posting some, just to see what works best with wording and photos. You should delete the old postings so there is always only the latest one. Always post at least one photo - or more if they are nice photos. can post up to 4 photos.

I think it's worthwhile. The last 2 houses I bought, I found on craigslist!!

I put up signs at a garage sale I was having that our house was going up for sale. I wouldn't show it during the garage sale but was more than willing to make arrangements if someone wanted to see it the next day or later in the week.
I had two people inquire about seeing it. One was a agent looking for a listing and the other was a sibling to someone who was looking to move to the area. The siblings made an appointment to come see it. It was number one on their list of potential houses to buy. Only problem was the job he had thought he was going to be offered he did not get. Killed the move and the sale of the house.

As far as reposting, the method that I've used in the past (when I was posting for 15 or a week for a RE agent) was to delete the posting, then you can go back into your account and repost it. You can change things at that time, but you don't have to go through the entire posting process again, and you don't end up with multiple postings of the same property. Also look into something like Postlets, which is a free service that makes your Craigslist posting look much nicer. Postlets also distributes your listing to a lot of other sites.

I had a showing from someone who saw my house on Craigslist. They're still trying to sell their house though. I put my house on every website I can find that's free, I don't care how dead the site might be because you never know. (Now if I'm paying, I look for active sites.) If there is something unique about your house, you should post it on places where someone who is looking for that house might be. For example, I have a horse farm. I post it on tons of horse websites. A few years ago I sold an old house. I posted it on HistoricProperties and similar sites, for example. I also took out a display ad in the local newspaper that I know all the tourists and retirees around here read. (I also live by a lake.) Someone who's trying to get family members to move down here might see it. I always think, where would I look if I was looking for a property like this? I have it on Realtor.com but I don't get any action from there. Hope that helps.

I think the usefulness of posting on craigslist might depend on your local market and/or your property.

I live in a suburb of a big city. When I looked at the real estate (for sale) section on craigslist for single family homes it was at least 95% ads or spam. As a buyer, it was totally not worth my time to look for houses there. The few specific properties on there were also listed on the MLS sites. So, in my area I wouldn't bother posting on craigslist.

As a buyer - we found our current house on craigslist. However, we were looking for homes in 1 of 2 neighborhoods, so we could search off the neighborhood names.

As a seller - we did a flat fee listing and put an ad on craigslist ourselves. We got several serious showings through craigslist, but also our fair share of nutjobs. We did have to repost multiple times per week.

Agree with the following. We get lots of Florida real estate listings & duplicates of MLS listings.

"...When I looked at the real estate (for sale) section on craigslist for single family homes it was at least 95% ads or spam. As a buyer, it was totally not worth my time to look for houses there. The few specific properties on there were also listed on the MLS sites."

I bought my current home from a FSBO craigslist ad. I don't think it's such a big deal that the ads get buried quickly since most people are not browsing, but searching according to specific criteria (# beds, baths, and town or subdivision name). Put plenty of accurate keywords in your listing and lots of pictures (you can place an unlimited amount of pictures via html, but craigslist will only host 4).

revamp is right... who care how buried the post gets... people use the search feature to sort through the stuff not meaningful to them.
Keep in mind that the only listings found on Craigslist that will not be in the local MLS are FSBOS.

From experience of posting ads, I got 95% of Craigslist inquries within 1-2 days of posting a new ad. If I posted a new ad once every 10 days, then first 2 days I got lots of inquries and last 8 days no inquries.

Maybe some folks use search criteria, but most others just look at the last couple days of ads and ignore the "buried" ads.

I experienced this when posting on Craigslist to sell a home FSBO and also on other occasions to rent a home.

Ok - I'll keep posting. Doesn't take much time and it might help! :)

Thanks, everyone.

really depends on how the people in your area use craigslist and how the RE agents do.

in my area a post would be buried in a matter of half a day. most RE brokerages post in mass to craigslist, all of their listings. searching can be a waste of time too, as they put in 20-30 area towns in the posting body, and it seems that a lot of houses don't have the town in the title.

as a seller, I didn't get any response from posting. As a buyer, it was a complete waste of time to even look on mine.