Philip J.

Spareroom used to be a great place for landlords to find tenants and for tenants to find somewhere to live but over the past year the website is littered by fake adverts from letting agents. As a landlord I used to get lots of replies to my advert (which cost £24.99 for 28 days) but now there are so many agents adverts on there that your advert very quickly (within a couple of hours) slides down the list and off the first several pages so that it is very unlikely that your advert will be seen after those first couple of hours. Renewing your advert only places your advert to the top of the bold list for the DAY that you placed your advert - so if you placed your advert 7 days ago then you will always have 7 days worth of adverts above yours as well as other adverts on your advert's day which have been renewed since yours was. Tenants have told me most of the letting agents adverts are fake (e.g. Great location, lovely property, low rent) and are just used to get you to call the agent who will say that property you phoned about is no longer available but will persuade you to go and view their other "amazing" properties which tend to be in not such a great location, are not so nice and nowhere near as good value as their advertised property. Spareroom are of course a business and make good money out of the agents adverts but this has resulted in the website becoming pretty useless for landlords and tenants.