Regardless of your price point we recommend you take advantage of Craigslist.  It’s one of the best ways to bring traffic to your property, and it’s free.

1.    Go to Craigslist.com. Select your region and then create an account.  It’s free.  This will save you time in the long run because posting ads without an account takes longer.

2.    Return to the Craiglist.com home page and click “Post to Classifieds” in the upper left hand corner.

3.  Select “Housing Offered”

4.  Select your category (e.g. “Real Estate by Broker”)

5.    Select the location nearest you.
6.    Add Property Information

Enter in the “Price” “Posting Title” and “Specific Location” into the required fields

Get your HTML flyer

Copy the snippet of code shown below and paste it into the “Posting Description” of your ad.

7.    That’s it.  There is no need to add anything else.  The snippet of code you just pasted into the description has everything you need.  Click “Continue”.
8.    Input the verification at the bottom
9.    You’re done.  If you did not create an account you’ll be sent an email of your ad to verify it.  You’ll need to click a link in the email to make your post official.

10.  Your ad will go live within 15 minutes.  However, it will only appear on craigslist.com for 7 days.  After that it will expire.  We’ll send you an email reminder once a week to re-post.  Monday or Tuesday works best.

If you have any questions please let us know

Bellevue, WA- OpenHouseAdvertising.com has announced that they’ve teamed up with ByOwnerMLS.com to give their single listing websites even more exposure.  Now when you create a single listing website using Open House Advertising it can be found by searching for real esate for sale using ByOwnerMLS.com.

ByOwnerMLS is a Real Estate search engine that brings together virtually every “for sale by owner” listing. Consumers can now search the most comprehensive resource of “for sale by owner” home, condominium, time share, rental, vacation home, town home, multi-family, vacant land and commercial listings posted on the web. Listing partners upload and modify their inventory as it changes, providing viewers with an accurate representation for every “for sale by owner” listing.

Recent surveys have shown that between 70% to 85% of home buyers start their search online. With so many popular Real Estate websites that don’t pull from the MLS, it is difficult and time-consuming for agents to post their listings on all of them. Open House Advertising has your solution.

Here is a growing list of sites your single listing website will be submitted to:

Trulia is a real estate search engine that helps buyers find homes for sale and provides real estate information at the local level to help buyers make better decisions in the process.

About Trulia.com

Google Base is a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content (real esate), which becomes searchable on Google.

Over 56% of all Internet searches on “real estate” and related terms are conducted on Google and our partner sites, and the majority of those searchers are actively looking for listings or referrals to brokers and agents. You can make sure that they can find your listings by submitting them to Google Base

Vast.com is a leading vertical search platform for autos, travel, and real estate, with millions of users a month making purchasing decisions through Vast.com’s network of partner websites. Vast.com improves the online shopping experience with the largest selection, sub-second search times, and intuitive auto, real estate, and vacation rental search that helps users find the best match on the Internet for their needs.

Vast Real Esate Home Page

Launched in November 2005, the site allows users to search for housing using a graphical map. Listings are displayed at their addresses, allowing users to conduct a location-based search. Through the graphical interface, users click on individual property listings depicted by animated building icons. Whereas many websites are mash-ups of other mapping applications, like Google Maps, HotPads uses its own original mapping application.

About Hotpads.com

The Overstock.com real estate channel claims 2.9 million properties, including 2.6 million residential listings. Of those, 1.96 million are single-family homes, 246,000 are condos and townhouses, and another 73,720 are multi-unit properties.

Overstock.com moves into real estate
Overstock hits home run with Overstock real esate

Propsmart is a next-generation real estate search engine, aggregating over a million property listings from hundreds of online sources and private sellers and making them easily searchable with a GoogleMap-based visual interface.

About Propsmart.com

Oodle is the fastest growing classifieds service. Pulling together and organizing millions of listings from all over the Web, Oodle is simply the best way to buy and sell through online classifieds.

About oodle.com

With 52 million house valuations across the U.S., the site attracts as many as four million visitors a month. In less than a year since launch, the Seattle company has become one of the Internet’s biggest real estate destinations.

About Zillow.com
What’s your house worth to you

Properazzi is the world’s largest property portal, with listings in over 50 countries. They help buyers find a property wherever they are, or wherever they’re looking to go. They aren’t an estate agency and don’t recommend properties. Instead, bring the best of the web by aggregating millions of properties from just as many estate agents and property websites.

About Properazzi.com

ByOwnerMLS is a Real Estate search engine that brings together virtually every “for sale by owner” listing. Consumers can now search the most comprehensive resource of “for sale by owner” home, condominium, time share, rental, vacation home, town home, multi-family, vacant land and commercial listings posted on the web. Our Listing Company partners upload and modify their inventory as it changes, providing our viewers an accurate representation for every “for sale by owner” listing. (For more information about adding your inventory

<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/6zh26kzp6s” rel=”me”>Technorati </a>

Today Open House Advertising launched their latest single listing website design. This new look was created with the goal to simplify the information displayed for each listing. We also wanted to create a look that does not use a background image but still allows customization. Click here to take a look. If you come across a better looking display for real estate let us by leaving a comment below.

Neighborhoods Where the Bubble Hasn’t Burst-

In a report for Forbes.com, Hotpads.com, an aggregator of listings, produced a price-to-earnings spread for each ZIP code in the country’s 40 largest cities by comparing rental costs with buying costs for similar properties, based on number of bedrooms, location, and price per square foot.

A price-to-earnings ratio, or P/E, expresses how much a buyer has to pay for each dollar of return. Buyers in high P/E neighborhoods pay a huge premium to live in the area relative to how much it costs to rent a similar property there.

A high P/E can simply mean a neighborhood is overpriced, but it can also indicate where buyers have gambled that the area will ultimately appreciate further, turning an overpaying buyer into a smart investor.

Here are 10 neighborhoods, by ZIP code, where P/E is highest, but so is the confidence that the area will appreciate further:

New York, TriBeCa, ZIP code 10013, Purchase-to-rent spread: 36.3
Boston, Chinatown, ZIP code 02111, P/E spread: 30.5
Seattle, Downtown, ZIP code 98104, P/E spread: 30.3
Los Angeles, West Hollywood, ZIP code 90038, P/E spread: 30.2
San Diego, Calif., Mission Hills, ZIP code 92103, P/E spread: 30
San Francisco, Outer Sunset, ZIP code 94122, P/E spread: 28.5
Phoenix, Coronado, ZIP code 85006, P/E spread: 27.1
Dallas, Greenway Parks, ZIP code 75209, P/E spread: 26.7
Portland, Ore., Rose City Park, ZIP code 97213, P/E spread: 26.6
San Jose, Calif., Willow Glen, ZIP code 95125, P/E spread: 26.1

Source: Forbes.com, Matt Woolsey (07/29/2008)

In related news, buyers who use hotpads.com to search for their next home will also see home listings created by open house advertising. Now, even more exposure.

Open House Advertising announces their partnership with vast.com

Bellevue, WA, July 30, 2008 - OpenHouseAdvertising.com has announced that they’ve teamed up with Vast.com to give their single listing websites even more exposure. Vast.com is a leading vertical search platform for real estate, with millions of users a month making purchasing decisions through Vast.com’s network of partner websites such as OpenhouseAdvertising.com.

Open House Advertising got it’s first shout out the other day, not about the company directly, but about one of our single listing websites. A home we did a website for, www.417westprospect.com, was featured in an article by seattlepi.com recently. The site was not mentioned in the article but it was posted in a comment left by a reader. Apparently the reader wanted to see if the home was for sale or not so they used Google to find it.

Below is a screen shot of the comment…

Now, that may not seem like it’s a big deal, but if you search for this home, enter 417 west prospect into google, you’ll find that not only does it come up first - but ahead of sites like Redfin.com, Trulia.com and Google maps.

The single listing website www.417westprospect.com has been live for about three weeks. It does take a little time for your site to be recognized by google, yahoo and other search engines. Search engine recognition can be a tricky thing.

Oh yeah, if you wanted to read the article about the home click here.

Even though Open House Advertising provides online marketing for your single listing website (click here) there are many things you can do to help drive potential buyers to it.

here are a couple of tips to drive traffic to your site and help your listing sell faster!

1. Place Website URL Into The MLS
Make sure to place your url http://www.websitename.com into the virtual tour section of your mls listing. This is very important, by doing this your virtual tour link will show up on all MLS sites, such as realtor.com. If you’d like to know how to do this contact us.

2. Your Marketing Materials
Remember to include your domain www.websitename.com into all of your marketing materials (brochures, mailers, etc). Single listing websites display more photos, more info, give a virtual tour of the real estate and more.

3. Email Your Client List
Copy and paste www.websitename.com into your email and send it to your clients. Not only may they forward it on, but be impressed by how you showcase and market real estate online.

4. Sign Rider
Put your domain on your sign rider to grab the attention of drive-by buyers. Open House Advertising offers this service but it may be easier for the agent to do it themselves if they know the URL when creating their sign.

5. Magazines and Newspaper Ads. Save Money
Many agents like to market their listings in major newspapers ads. By replacing the description and details of the home with the website url you can save money by taking up less space.

When creating a single listing website Open House Advertising provides clients with their top choice for an available domain name. Occasionally the web address we recommend doesn’t suit the customer. If you decide to choose your own domain name for your Open House Website we’ve provided a few simple tips to guide you.

The Smaller the web address the better. It’s easy to fit on your sign rider and easy for drive by buyers to read and remember. The easier it is to type into a web browser or email the more likely people with share it with others.

Keep it simple. It’s the content of the site that will attract visitors from search engines like Google and Yahoo, not the name of the web address. Therefore it’s not important to include “homeforsale” or the city and state in the URL if you already have a good domain name.

Always use a dot.com. There are plenty of combinations within your listing address to create a suitable domain name for your Open House Advertising website. .com is the first extension that most people try when searching for a website.

Looking for tips on choosing a domain for your business. Click on the links below

8 Quick Tips to Choosing a Domain Name
10 Tips for Choosing a Domain Name

Many would argue that all the listings are in the MLS. Well, they’re right, but aren’t all companies also listed in Yellow Pages? While the MLS is a great tool, it doesn’t single out your property over others, and requires some very specific searching.

Some of the most popular real estate search websites do not pull from the MLS. Sites like Craigslist, Trulia and others require sellers to post their real estate themselves. Solely relying on the MLS and or your companies’ website you’ll miss an opportunity of showing your listing to hundreds of potential customers.

Many would agree it’s not very pleasant to look at a home posted on the MLS. Rather than writing about this, see for yourself. Which showcase do you like better? MLS: realtor.com or a Single Listing Website: ws2205.com

So what do you think? Here’s some more advantages to using single listing websites:

Stand Out From Your Competition

Demonstrate that you’re marketing your client’s property in the place where potential buyers are looking and impress them with an ideal listing presentation including virtual tours, buyer information, unlimited photos, and more.

Unique .com domain

Enjoy the benefits of having a listing with its own personalized domain name, this is best used on a sign rider to grab the attention of drive-by buyers. No more tireless searches through the web Bring potential buyers directly to a site 100% dedicated to your listing.

Online Marketing

Reach buyers world wide. Be seen on the top real estate search websites like Craigslist, Trulia and others. This will expand your potential, as a large percentage of homes bought are from people out of state.

Complete SEO customization

By including important regional and industry-specific keywords, you can tailor the way you would like your single listing site to be found in major search engines like Google and Yahoo.

One site that is 100% dedicated to the property

There is NO competition with other listings to distract the buyer and it’s available to view 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. An open house everyday!

Referrals

Single Listing Websites make it easy for your clients to tell others about you. Create a beautiful showcase for your sellers and they’ll certainly spread the word about it. Single listing websites are easy to forward to friends and family by email, and each time, your contact information will be seen.

Here are some other blog posts about single listing websites:

Single Property Websites - Active Rain

Home Buyer Statistics

All Open House Advertising clients deal with an actual person when creating their single listing websites. That means we do everything for you so you don’t have to lift a finger. To get started with your single listing website contact us here or learn more about us.