Compete reports that the number of CL visits more than doubled from (eyeballing this) about 7M in 12/07 (they don’t have earlier data) to 15.3M in 06/08; ~120% growth. During the same period, your “For Sale” listings appear to rise from about 1.1M to about 1.8M, or 64%. That suggests that the number of For Sale listings per user is actually declining.

However, the garage sale graph shape notably does not mirror the overall CL visits graph shape, so it would no doubt remain interesting even after it had been normalized for regular traffic growth.

Of course, there are all kinds of other biases here that don’t show up in these very high-level analyses, such as total and average dollar value of the items sold, regional variations (do areas with more distressed residential real estate have more sales?), changes in the mix of products offered, and so on. CL has all this data; it would be interesting if they made it available for crunching” (Adam).

Lance says:
Good post and good feedback Adam. Do you have any other “shotgun” visual indicators of the economy speeding its retraction?

Methodology aside, it’s a good question. And the online commerce and publicity outlets (ebay, Amazon, craigslist) could become a valuable source of information on the economy.

Not to make any generalizations, but it’s possible that the people that are later to become aware of Craigslist are less technically inclined and more likely to have yard sales.

(link)