Craigslist has done a lot LOT of harm to the plight of the renter. Realtors have incentive to spam, post bait-and-switch, or flag the FSBOs when they are significantly < "market price".

Side note: http://www.realtor.com/robots.txt

Problem: locked down rental listings (can't search) + free advertising for Realtors = the leeches in the NAR controlling market prices w/nobody stopping them.

  </soapbox>

Rather than that "beta testing" charge for companies to post jobs, craigslist should charge for posting in the rentals / housing, category imho.

In my experience, the quality level of ads has dropped considerably. My last two Craigslist experiences:

I recently tried looking for a used car in the Chicago area. It turns out almost all the postings in the "by owner only" area are actually dealers in disguise. I found this out the hard way after driving an hour to see a car at what turned out to be some kind of sketchball dealership.

Another time, someone posted an ad for a musical instrument. I go to the guys house and he turns out to be some type of dealer/wholesaler. He didn't even have the actual instrument from the ad and was pulling some bait-and-switch crap.

All of this has pretty much soured me on Chicago Craigslist, but I will say that the experience is probably still a bit better in smaller metropolitan areas.

> are actually dealers in disguise. I found this out the hard way after driving an hour to see a car at what turned out to be some kind of sketchball dealership.

before driving you should have run the search for their number. Serial postings for various cars is definitely not FSBO.

Read their TOU. By using Craigslist you agree to help flag bad ads.

Yet from driving an hour to see one car you arrive at the conclusion that "almost all" of the by-owner car ads in Chicago Craiglist are dealers. OK.