In trying to sell my home For Sale By Owner I knew that I was in competition with San Diego's massive MLS service. My goal was to treat my RE-List4free.com listing as my "home base" for all of my Internet activity. Everything I did to promote and market my home referred to my listing on RE-List4free.com.
My first step was to send out an email to about 10 friends that I know who are in the real estate business or others who I know would appreciate that I finally decided to sell my home. That first day generated quite a few hits. But I wanted more hits that were from complete strangers.
The second thing I did was type up the URL (http://www.re-list4free.com) on the flyers that I included with the sign in front of my house. Next to the URL I place my listing number. This would make it easy for anyone who picked up a flyer to check out more details when they got home, and would also make it easy for them to send a "digital flyer" to their family/friends/agents who cannot go and get a flyer for themselves.
My next step was to use Craigslist.com in San Diego. Since Craigslist allows only 4 photos, I set up a link (which is very easy to do if you look at the RE-List4free.com tools) to my RE-List4free.com listing. Also on Craigslist, since one cannot post multiple listings that are similar, I systematically delete my listing and re-post it so it is on every day's listing of homes for sale. If I have the time, I post in morning and evening. Just make sure you delete before you re-post. Quite cumbersome, but after talking with the founder of RE-List4free.com it was limitations like these on Craigslist that inspired him to start this web site. I also decided to include Craiglist's Orange County real estate service since Oceanside is only 20 minutes from San Clemente, the southern part of Orange County.
Lately I have seen a wave of hits. My latest trick is to systematically use Google.com and look up real estate agents in both San Diego and Orange Counties. I know after talking with agents that they would not ever show my home unless there was a commission. This is why I specifically mentioned in everything I publish that I was "willing to cooperate with agents." In SoCal, the going rate is now 2.5%, so if an agent decides to bring me a buyer, I am ready to reward them. So I created an Excel spreadsheet with the following headers: Date | Who | Contact | Email | Wrote Back | Follow Up And I simply go down the google list, fill in the agent's web site URL in the "who" column (which is rather wide) and fill in the rest if they reply and if I follow up.
So just what was it that generated over a hundred hits in about 4 days? I would say "all of the above" as well as the fact that I happen to live quite close to San Diego, which is the 7th largest city in the US. I do know one thing: there is a cause and effect to marketing. I decided to "be my own boss" and sell my home on my own, and the number of hits has been quite rewarding. Speaking of hits, when will that irresistable offer hit me?
