For a while now, some of you suggested the ability to enter move in costs for listings.  In the past, we have recommended to use the notes field and the landlord tags.  However, while using those fields do accomplish the task, it is not very precise.  An agent cannot tell with a glance what’s needed and how much money is needed.

We haven’t made this improvement till now mostly because we were worried about adding more fields and complexities to the system.  It is very difficult to be easy to use and intuitive, yet powerful.

We have finally made this feature available.  Now you can enter the move in costs to any listing, and the system will automatically tally up the numbers for you and your users.  You will find an extra link called Update Move In Costs in the Listing Details page.  Clicking it will bring up a form allowing to enter / modify that listing’s move in costs, and allow you to apply it to the building or landlord.  This is also enabled when entering new listings.  Please see screen shots below for more info.

The list of items are not comprehensive.  If we are missing anything, please let us know.

New Update Link in Listing Details Page

Move in costs formThank you all for your great feedback.

It seems like Craigslist implemented some new changes to their email display policies due to recent email spamming.  Some of you might be having trouble posting ads that have email addresses displayed in the ad body.

We have been doing some testing here, so far we were not able to reproduce this error just yet.  From what we know, if you remove email addresses from the ad body, it fixes the problem.

To help resolve this issue, we just made a new addition to your ad email display settings: Anonymize in Craigslist / Hide in Ads.  You can access this option from Dashboard -> Profile -> Ad Settings.  This new option will allow you to hide your email address in your ad body, while only use the Craigslist’s anonymized email address.

If you are struggling with this, don’t hesitate to give us a call.  We are here to help.

You probably noticed that we changed the button styles last night.  We re-grouped the buttons to the top level to make the layout more consistent, better looking and more intuitive.  This is a part of the an series of UI changes coming to YGL to improve user experience.  In the very near future, we’ll be changing the site navigation to make room for some important features we’ll be adding.

As always, your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Some of you asked for the ability to use the landlord’s features and photos for the listings directly in your advertisements and your websites.  We thought it was a great idea, and it saves you time and efforts.  However we needed to solve one thing, which is that you need to be able to control what’s displayed to the renters.  So, if a landlord shares something you don’t want to display to the renters, you can hide it.

Starting today, all features and photos provided by the landlords will, by default, be included in your advertisements and websites (office and personal).  However, if for any reason you do not want to advertise them, you can update the landlord’s privacy settings to change what’s displayed to the renters.

If you open the Landlord Details page, you’ll notice a new Privacy drop down button with 2 options, Hide Shared Features From Renters, Hide Shared Photos from Renters.  By toggling these settings on / off, you can control if the selected landlord’s features and photos are displayed in your advertisements and websites.

We just added a new Privacy Setting feature to listings in the YGL system.  Currently, this new feature allows you to hide listings from renters, so the hidden listings are no longer advertised.  When a listing is hidden from renters, it will no longer be included in your websites (personal & office), and it will also no longer be syndicated to any 3rd party sites like Google Base and Hotpads.

The reason for this addition is that you are accessing listings from landlords.  There might be listings you do not want to market.  For example, a landlord might enter a Room For Rent listing, but you do not want to deal with those.  You can now hide them from the renters.

You will notice a new Privacy button on each Listing Details page.  Clicking on it will bring up the Privacy menu allowing you to make modifications.

In the near future, we will be adding other privacy settings like sharing with brokers.  Also, we have plans to change all links to confirm to the new button style.