[Srn22]

Yeah, these apartment hunting services (the ones in which they drive you around for free and get paid the first month's rent by the unit's owner) do extremely well and seem to be far more popular than Craigslist. Also, they are the ones on Craigslist over-saturating the listings in the hopes that they can show you an apartment and if you don't like it, they can easily take you to see more.

There is so much overlap because the apartment finders (working on commission) are all posting the same listings they grab off the MLS. This seems ripe for innovation as the redundancy and non-existent barriers of entry make for a very ineffective system.