From Elizabeth Weintraub,
Your Guide to Home Buying / Selling.
FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!

Almost every home buyer who has an Internet connection starts out searching for homes online. Statistics tell us that more than eight out of every 10 home buyers are looking on the Internet: checking out competing inventory and putting together lists of homes they want to see. Because you don't know exactly which Web site a home buyer might check, home listings should be posted everywhere.

Basic Internet Listing Information

Include all key elements in your listing description. If you miss an important detail, a prospective home buyer might pass over your Internet home listing:

• Property address.
• Sales price.
• Number of bedrooms and baths.
• Year the home was built.
• Style of home & number of stories
• Square footage.
• Acreage or lot size.
• Name of subdivision or location.
• Other rooms: family-den-media-library, etc.
• Type of flooring.
• Type of garage.
• Features such as fireplace or pool.
• Appliances.
• Upgrades.
• HVAC description.
• Contact information, including phone number.

Describe Buyer Features & Benefits

Features are a description of the home. Benefits are how the buyer will use that feature. A benefit makes the feature personal, and it's what sells homes. Don't just inform, instead, illustrate. For example:

• Feature: Fenced yard.
  Benefit: Privacy, sunning area, place for pets to play, lush lawn to run barefoot on, room for a pool, space to grow fresh vegetables or plant flower gardens.

• Feature: Dual pane windows.
  Benefit: Lower utility bills, energy efficiency gives peace of mind to environmentally concerned consumers, warmer in winter and cooler in summer, low maintenance, easy to operate and clean.

• Feature: Gourmet kitchen.
  Benefit: Professional tools for serious cooks, makes meal preparation fun and enjoyable, impress friends with state-of-the-art equipment, space to display cookware and books, convenience and time-saving devices, simplified care and maintenance, beauty and eye-appealing design makes the kitchen a comfortable and inviting workspace.

Caution: Be careful not to violate the Fair Housing Act by using discriminatory words.

Include Photographs

Pictures tell the story better than any words. Utilize four to eight photographs in your e-flyer, 12 to 24 for an Internet posting.

• Use a wide-angled digital camera. Shoot more photos than you need. Try different view points -- ground level or bird's eye views, and take them from a variety of angles to find the best pictures that scream "buy me."

• Bare minimum: front, back, kitchen and living room.

• Take close-ups of interesting features such as tile work, chandeliers or fireplace mantels.

• Use photo enhancement software. Color correct, crop, reduce image and downsize pixels (72 or 96 dpi) for the Web.

Create a Flyer & Upload

I often use vFlyer.com to create my flyers. It offers unlimited use free for consumers, and professionals can upload a minimum number of home listings for free every month. When you are finished creating the flyer, press publish. You can copy the HTML code on the screen and use it to post on Craigslist.org.

Best of all, vFlyer automatically publishes your flyer on the following Web sites:

• Oodle
• Google base
• Edgeio
• Trulia
• Vast
• PropSmart

You can also hire professional designers or online Web sites to create flyers for you.

Other Web Sites

New Web sites pop up daily that accept free home listings. If you are working with a real estate agent, tell your agent where you are going to post your home listing to avoid duplicated efforts.

• Zillow.com. Check the Zestimate first, which is often way off market value. If it's too low, you probably do not want to post your home listing there.

• Active Rain. This professional and consumer real estate networking site accepts embedded HTML from vFlyer.

• eBay. While eBay charges a fee, the amount is nominal.

• MySpace. Lots of social networks support free real estate listings. Check out your own favorites. Happy posting!