Free Property Advertising Websites and great rental lead generators

I run one of those free property websites. We went through a long process of negotiating with Realestate.com.au and domain.com.au to list on their websites for private sales if people wanted to pay. Realestate has a monthly subscription agents pay to have unlimited listings. We did the same with Domain. We had even arranged to hire/contract a Real estate agent who would act on behalf for the privater listings , however once they new our intent was to market private properties even that didn't seem to matter. They still refused our business. It appears to be some of a du-duopoly here for most things ( coles / wool worths) Competition which helps consumers is strongly opposed. The US has a system called the MLS whcih allows private sale websites or for sale by owner sites to purchase a listing on through a broker . It cost them around 300, however it gives the listing exposure through a national system and multiple real estate agents. It would be nice to see something like that so private sales people could get similar exposure.

There are a bunch of private free for sale websites out there . The problem is getting a dense enough high volume site that can compete with the two main site. It may take some time , however I think people are looking for it .

I am currently on the look out for my first rental place (after a 2 bedroom apartment near Brisbane CBD), and in my travels I've found Gumtree.com.au to be the best for private advertising, but to be honest, it's not really as "good" a website as it could be.

By that I mean, it's bland, and mostly textual. Which is great from a minimalist perspective, but I believe that Domain has the best "site" in terms of usability and layout, and that if this was replicated onto perhaps an advertisement-funded free to advertise website, it could be a winner.

Another problem with gumtree is that it is largely unmoderated, despite being owned by ebay, there seems to be alot of ads in the wrong categories which is agravating to the user, such as "rent wanted" ads being in the "rent offered" section, and there has also been some cases where scammers have posted fake ads on there, one I came into contact with was someone offering an inner city unit for a too-good-to-be-true price, turns out he is from america and is using it for some sort of identity theft. Stuff like that puts me, as a potential renter off websites like those.

I guess it is a bit off topic, but I thought that some property investors would be keen to hear my thoughts on properties advertised through sites like these. Don't get me wrong, I'll still go through gumtree in my search for an apartment, but I'll be vary wary.

As a software developer by occupation (and also studying part time) I can see how this sort of website could be done alot better, and given the write administration, marketing and moderation, could be successfull. Perhaps I'll start making something in my spare time and see if I can get close to what I believe would be the ideal site.

Check Landlordz. (http://www.landlordz.com.au). I used Landlordz to advertise my rental property and got great results and it was free to advertise my rental property online.

Hi scarecrow,

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Dogmersfield, your website appears to be a REA's website in Chicago, so why would you use gumtree to look for apartments (presumably in Australia?)?