If you’re a New York City-based rental broker who lists on Craigslist, the free ride is over. It’s only a matter of when this year and by how much.
News trickled out in early December of the phenomenally popular Web site’s plans to charge a fee starting in 2006 to brokers in New York, but details were scarce. But Craig Newmark, the “Craig” in Craigslist, recently shared some tentative details with The Real Deal.
First, the fee will be nominal. Newmark wrote in an email that it will probably be around $10, and that brokers will be able to charge it to credit cards through the San Francisco-based site, which gets about 10 million unique visitors monthly. Craigslist will probably not offer discounts, according to Newmark, even if brokers buy a lot of listings at once. Also, the fee would only apply to rental brokers in New York City.
Newmark laid out questions the site must answer before it starts charging the fee, including whether $10 is too much for smaller brokerages and whether landlords listing their rentals directly should be charged.
Citing “the need to be fair to pretty much everyone,” Newmark stressed the tentativeness of any details. The privately held company that Newmark founded a decade ago currently makes all of its money – CNNMoney.com estimated its 2005 revenues at around $20 million – by charging employers in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York a fee for listing jobs. Everything else listed on the site, including rentals, can be posted for free.
For now.