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Our recent rental listing site report underscored the fact that Craigslist commands a strong presence in the search engines when potential tenants search for rental property. This, in addition to Craigslist’s large and loyal userbase, has arguably made it the most widely used “rental” site on the web.

Dave Dugdale, founder of Rentvine.com, recently posted a great interview with David Borden discussing the challenges and opportunities presented by Craigslist to the rental listing industry. (Click through to see the video.)

I see three important takeaways from this for owners of rental sites:

1. User experience is key, and it really shouldn’t be difficult for a specialized site to do a better job. However, remember that Craigslist has two native advantages: tons of content, which users want to see, and a very simple, completely familiar interface that everyone already knows how to use. So, user experience should not be confused with simply having more features, your site also needs to be really intuitive.
2. Rental scams still abound on Craigslist, and if a rental site does a better job of shutting down this activity, it could be an important selling point for users.
3. Because Craigslist does not allow companies to competitively differentiate their listings, the shelf-life of a rental listing is very low. There is money to be made in allowing companies to compete.

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