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Step 1
Today, between 60% and 90% of everyone looking to buy a house starts their search online. Most of the time, they will find a short real estate agent's listing of a home giving the basic information about a house. This information does not vary much from one house to another, and it rarely includes sales vocabulary. It is usually just a list of features, location, and contact information.
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Step 2
To create your online home sales packet, first decide where you will host it. It is likely easiest to use a service like Google Sites, but you can buy cheap hosting for $4 or $5 a month from a number of hosting services if you wish. Then, decide if you want to put this together yourself or turn it over to a website designer. You can do it yourself with less than an hour's study if you use something like Sites.
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Step 3
With Sites or something similar, you won't have to worry too much about design. It is laid out for you, and content is what is most important in any case. Include the following in your online packet: a quick description of your home and a longer, more detailed description, directions to your home via text and you can include an online map, a disclosure statement, an independent inspection report, a radon report if that is an issue in your locale, and a copy of your property survey. You should also include a picture of your front elevation. You can also include pdf versions of these documents for your potential buyers to download from your site.
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Step 4
If your house is for sale by owner, you may want to try to sell it by a bidding process after an open house. If you do, the open house should last two day over the weekend. You should include the bidding rules in your online information packet. Make hard copies of all of this information and put them together for your at-home packet. You can make this available at your open house.
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Step 5
The hardest work for you will be to drive potential buyers to your online packet. It is unlikely you will get decent search engine results. There are thousands of homes in your area on hundreds of websites vying for attention on the Internet. So, you must advertise the link to your online packet. If you are using a real estate agent, negotiate upfront that they will link to your packet in any online promotion that they do. If you are selling by owner, put the url link on any and all advertising that you do. If you want to invest, you can also buy ad space on search engine results pages. Driving buyers to your packet site is the most important step in making the packet work for you. Spend some time and effort figuring out the best way to do so.
