What do more than 1 million Craigslist rental listings tell us about the housing market? That’s the question of a recent Washington Post article about the online classified site that reportedly “has become the single largest information exchange about the rental housing market in the United States.” Citing research from University of California at Berkeley that looked at over 1.5 millions listings, they show how Craigslist is becoming a virtual market barometer – covering both the high & the low ends of the market in all corners of the country.
“Craigslist has the potential to detect patterns other data sets can’t, such as how quickly rents rise over time — in real time — in a single neighborhood.”
