How to Use Craigslist RSS Feed to Find a Rental

Craigslist is a widely popular listing site for over 3,000 cities and thousands of listings for all kinds of items, and you might have just moved to a new area and want to find a good rental. Instead of logging into craigslist everyday and search and read hundreds of rental listings for a 2 bedroom 2 bath home near downtown under $1500 and wasting hours reading all the listings, you can subscribe to Craigslist RSS feed and have your searches posted right to your home page.

Things You'll Need

• Google Account
• Google Reader

Instructions

1. 1. Sign up for an RSS reader.
   I do this using Google Reader as it posts all RSS feeds right to my Google home page. First you need to have a Google account. Simple enough, just to go to Google/Accounts and enter the required email and password information. You will see a tab listing on your Google Homepage called Google Reader. For the purpose of this article, Google reader will allow us to centrally store our RSS feeds on our Craigslist Rental search in one place as they happen.

2. 2. Go to Craigslist and set up search parameters.
   Log into Craigslist and click on the "housing" tab (remember, we're looking for house rentals). Then click on "apts/housing for rent" tab. Up will come all of the rental listings in your area. In the search box for rentals, put in your specific search request. Ours was 2 bedroom, 2 bath, near downtown, under $1500. Then hit the search tab. You can be as specific as you want in your search parameters. It's all right if your search results come back with only one or two listings.

3. 3. Get the RSS link for those search parameters.
   Once your search results have some up, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the Craigslist page and look for the orange RSS icon. Right click on the icon and select "copy link location". Copy that location and go to your Google Reader page you signed up for. At the top left, you will see an "ad subscription" box. Copy the link from the Craigslist RSS feed you just made into the box.
   This will give you a link on your Google page with a long name (such as 2 bedrooms, 2 bath under, $1500 near downtown...). Rename this to something you want like Rentals Downtown. Do this in the "feed settings" tab and "rename subscription".

4. Manage your settings.
   Once you have filed your RSS feed onto Google reader, every time a listing is posted with your parameters, it will be automatically posted as it happens to your Google reader. If you are not getting a lot of listings, you might have to broaden your specifics. If this is in a hot housing market or hot location where rentals go fast (like near a University), have the RSS feeds sent to your smart phone (my i-phone has an app for it).