According to Craig
Started by San Francisco IT geek Craig Newmark, Craigslist has grown from a living-room hobby into a cyberspace shopping mall that today is in 450 cities around the world. Free classifieds draw Web traffic of 8 billion page views per month, with 45 million of them happening on the Charlotte site (charlotte.craigslist.org ). We cruised the Charlotte site recently and did an unscientific comparison with three cities of similar size.
Housing: A Downtown Condo
| Charlotte |
Austin |
Seattle | Washington, D.C. |
|
| Price | $339K | $449K | $324K | $350K |
| What you get | Fourth-floor 1,135 SF condo in Gateway Plaza facing Trade Street, 2BR, 2 BA, 2 garage spaces and private balcony, community rooftop terrace | 1,269 SF loft in the Market District, 1 BR, 1 BA, 1 garage space, high ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows with downtown view |
Eighteenth-floor 1 BR, 1 BA with balcony next to Pike Place Market, 24-hour concierge, fitness center, BBQ deck |
Third-floor 825 SF condo in Georgetown, 1 BR, 1 BA, no parking, parquet floors, fitness center |
| What you'll need | A job next door at the Bank of America Operations Center to land a zero commute | Musician friends to jam in your industrial setting |
A taste for fresh fish—the fish mongers toss off-the-boat salmon in front of crowds at Pike Place |
Ear plugs—this 1941 building may not be sound proof |
Free: You Pick Up
| Charlotte |
Austin |
Seattle | Washington, D.C. |
|
| What | Twelve-foot aluminum boat with oars, "does not leak and is in fine condition. I just have no room to store it." |
We found a free mobile home: "Single wide…You haul it away and it’s yours." | Skidding past the "blown up Saturn motor," couches, chairs, fill dirt, water heaters, firewood and futons, we landed on an ad for "hermit crab cage (no crab in it)." |
Victorian fireplace mantel (ad included a photo which showed a beautiful antique mantel). |
| What we discovered | This person didn’t remove the ad after the boat was given away. Someone finally posted instructions: "If it has been picked up and you do not want any more e-mails, then remove your posting dum dum." | Austin’s site is crammed with highway flea market trash, including used siding, baby bottles, egg cartons, and Styrofoam. | There are some funny writers in Seattle, including this mom of three who accidentally killed her son's first pet—a crab—due to neglect: "Please no emails telling me how terrible I was to forget." |
You could start a business with Washington freebies: pool table, swing set, smoking pipes with humidor, mahogany coffee table and matching end tables, even a doll house. We’re taking a truck up there after the next election. |
