Tips for buying on craigslist

Last week I gave you some tips for selling on craigslist.   Here’s a few of the steals we’ve been able to purchase from craigslist:

- Medela pump in style breastpump for $60
- Granite top oak table and chairs for $250
- Wooden rocking chair for $10
- Another (much nicer) rocking chair for $30
- Child’s sized rocking chair for $12 (we were on a rocking chair kick for awhile
- Antique reproduction desk for $250
- Ragazzi brand crib   and extremely nice mattress for $175
- Several Fisher Price Little People sets (this was from posting a wanted ad)
- Booster seat for $5
- Lots of toys for our church nursery for a SUPER good deal

And here’s a few things we’ve learned in our experiences of buying:

Respond quickly. If the item you’re looking for is in high demand, you are going to have to respond fast. If you don’t catch a popular item (nice baby cribs, for example) within an hour or two of it being posted, you’re probably going to miss out. This means you will probably need to sit at your computer all day and hit “refresh”, or include your phone number so that they can call you. If they can’t get ahold of you, they will go on to someone else. Be prepared to pick it up – if you don’t have a way to transport the item, figure it out before you start looking. Along with this, try to be very easy to work with, because as I said in the seller’s guidelines, you may get skipped over if you are a high-maintenance buyer.

Evaluate how much you’re willing to spend with how far away you’ll have to drive. If you are looking for a rocking chair and want to spend no more than $50, but one pops up for $30 that’s an hour away, you will still probably be within your budget even when you figure gas into it. Likewise, if you find a rocking chair that’s ten minutes away for $50, you’ve still got a great deal that fits in your budget. Just remember to count gas money as part your total cost.

Take cash. Unless you’ve made arrangements otherwise, you will need to pay cash even if the seller hasn’t explicitly stated so. Also, though it is generally rude to ask for a lower price before you’ve seen something, it is perfectly acceptable to offer less once you have seen it if you feel the item is overpriced or simply won’t fit into your budget. They can always say no, so it doesn’t hurt to ask. Take cash in smaller denominations so that if they do agree to take less, you can give them exact change. Please don’t ask if they’ll take $250 on a $300 item and then give them three $100 bills and ask for change.

Use the search tool wisely. When we were looking for rocking chairs, I would use the search tool to quickly find relevant ads if I didn’t have time to sift through every single one. But some people call a rocking chair, and some people call it a rocker, so I had to use both terms. I also searched in “all for sale/wanted”, because sometimes things are miscategorized (I think the $10 rocking chair I found was under “general” and not “furniture”, and I guess it could have even been under “baby”!) We were looking for a bookcase for awhile, and that require quite the list of search terms: “bookcase”, “bookshelf”, “bookshelves”, and “shelves”, and “book” (since some people divide it into two words). If you have time, go through the listings manually because occasionally we would find relevent ads that didn’t come up in the search results for whatever reason.

Have you used the Colorado Springs craigslist with good success?   Post your tips in the comments!   If you’ve never used craigslist and have a question, just post a comment and I’ll answer it ASAP (if another reader doesn’t get to it first).

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