See all our CitiApartments coverage here.
We’ve talked before about flagging CitiApartments (or “citi apartments“) listings on Craigslist, as, given their alleged business practices of denying former tenants their uncontested deposits, they might be in violation of the “conduct” part of craigslist’s terms of use (and today marks the 11th time craigslist has failed to respond to requests to comment on this issue! Next time, don’t we get a free sub sandwich or something?).
A reader noted to us that it “looks like Citi agents are still leaving their affiliation off of their craigslist posts,” pointing out these ads from a known CitiApartments agent, and representing known (at least until they’re foreclosed upon!) Citi properties.
So one option is to pull other identifying information: names or phone numbers, for example, from known Citi agents and use that information to flag these ads. However, another friend of the site sent us this:
The downside is that now CitiApartments doesn’t tell you in the ad that they are CitiApartments – you only find out when you get there. In fact, it has probably been the best thing that could have happened to CitiApartments as far as increasing showings for their units. Unfortunate bad outcome for unknowing renters, though…I typically avoid all CitiApartment bldgs if I can, now I have no way of knowing.
Well. That’s interesting. Our goal was to do what we could to keep them from suckering in any unaware folks, but hearing that poses an interesting question: what’s the best way to keep innocent (if ignorant) folks from falling into the same trap? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments.
