Thurs Post #1: Craigslist... really?

This is 2800 River Road in Richmond.

A gaudy 11,900 square feet house situated on a 1.24 acre lot in Richmond's Terra Nova neighbourhood.

This 5 bedroom and 6 bathrooms behemoth has a master suite which includes a spa-like ensuite, walk-in closet, and private balcony. It comes complete with a home theatre, gym, 42 foot indoor pool with bar, three car garage and elevator.

The house has an assessed value of $3,304,000. 

Asking price: $5,880,000.

Yes... this is Richmond, the land of homes selling 25% below assessed value.

Not only is the asking price somewhat deluded and bizarre, check out the marketing strategy:

Craigslist? Really?

And not only are we using Craigslist, but as you can see below it was posted once on October 16th and then FOUR separate times on October 17th.

High end marketing at it's finest? Craigslist desperation? Or sheer real estate agent boredom?

Anyone have a spare $6 mil they wanna part with?

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Tues Post #1: Motivated! Must Sell! Craigslist as a gauge for real estate desperation?

For kicks and giggles I did a craigslist search for the term 'must sell' in ads listed on July 29th and 30th.

It's hard to imagine craigslist as the pawn shop of the real estate industry, but there was a curious number of listings found.

Search with the term 'motivated' and another plethora of listings emerges.

Personally I find the whole practice of selling a home on Craigslist somewhat bizarre. I can understand looking for renters on Craigslist, but a buyer?

Some say that the advantage of Craigslist is its “ubiquitous nature” in that, like Google and Facebook, the site is well known and is still the place on the internet for online classifieds.

And it's not just lower priced homes. There are listings for multi-million dollar homes on the site as well.

Really? A 3 million dollar home hawked in the same manner as used camping gear?

It seems to me sellers are likely to find that Craigslist may not drive the kind of traffic and interest to their home that traditional marketing methods do. But in a down market, surely many realtors are viewing the use of one of the internet’s premier local bulletin boards option as one where they have nothing to lose.

I'm curious to keep tabs on this in the coming months.

Will the number of CL ads from the 'desperate' ballon exponentially? Can the CL factor become a gauge for desperation end of the market?

I guess we will see. Click on the images below for a selection of today's search.

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