Why there are fewer listings here

How Funguo keeps availability current

Anyone who has looked for a house in Nairobi knows the afternoon: eleven listings saved, eleven calls made, and nine of them let weeks ago. The listings were never taken down, because taking a listing down is work that benefits nobody who is paid to do it.

Funguo takes them down.

What we do

Every listing carries the date its owner last confirmed it was available. Not the date it was posted, and not the date it was edited — the date somebody actually said yes, this is still there.

Three days before that confirmation runs out, we send the owner a text message with two links: one saying it is still available, one saying it has gone. Tapping either takes a second and needs no password. If they say it has gone, it comes down immediately. If nobody answers at all, we stop telling people it is available.

What you see

• Confirmed today, or two days ago, or five — a green line on the listing, with the number of days on it. This is a property somebody stood behind this week.
• Confirmed eight to thirteen days ago — amber. Still very likely there. We are already asking.
• Not confirmed recently — grey. We asked and heard nothing. The property may well still be available; we simply do not know, and we would rather say so than let a number keep counting up next to the word available.

Results are ordered by that date, so the most recently confirmed properties come first.

What happens to a listing nobody confirms

It stops showing in search. It is not rejected, and it is not marked as taken — nobody judged it and nobody said it had gone. It sits in the owner's own list, and one tap puts it back, without another review and without re-typing anything.

Owners who go quiet are not penalised. Nothing is deleted, nothing is held against them, and there is no charge for letting a listing lapse.

The trade

This means Funguo shows fewer properties than sites that never expire anything. That is not a shortfall we are working to close — it is the difference between a list of properties and a list of properties that exist.

A site with forty thousand listings, most of them stale, is not offering you forty thousand choices. It is offering you an afternoon on the phone.

What this does not tell you

A confirmation is the owner's word, taken at their word. It means somebody with access to the property said it was available on a date we can show you. It is not an inspection, it does not confirm that the property is as described or as photographed, and it does not mean the price is still the price. Where Funguo has checked something itself — an identity document, a location — the listing says so separately, and says who checked it and when.

We would rather tell you exactly how much we know than round it up.