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Sell Your Home Online

| Media & Tech

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Pure and simple: websites sell homes

With the mortgage fiasco and the downturn in home sales, it’s necessary to use all the available tools at your disposal to sell your home.  Websites can be built quite easily and for a very small investment.  All you really need is a little time and be willing to learn.

I use the web to sell a number of things from homes, to my mileageman1.com DVD for increasing fuel economy.  I also use our websites to advertise our rentals and promote classes that my wife and I teach.  A simple website can also drive customers your way and, when they visit your website, you can get paid paid residuals for ads, articles and even promote others.  I’m in the process of putting up a site that will help artists get exposure while getting paid to show what they do.  

If you want to sell your home but know that where you are it might take some time to do so, check into Google adsense or another similar type service and see if your site will qualify for click through ads.  If it does, you can generate some income from the site while you’re waiting for the home to sell.

Once your home sells, you’ll have the expertise to change the site to work with other items you want to sell or promote.  Since the Internet is worldwide, you’re not limited to local or regional items and can work with people from around the globe.  The perfect buyer for your home may not live in the state or country where you’re located, but you have the opportunity to reach them through your website.  

I work with realtors and use my website to do it.  Here’s how.  Realtors have to pay their bills just like the rest of us.  When the housing market slows, so does their income and many are willing to work with you at this time.   When I have a home for sale on the web, I contact local and regional realtors and tell them the URL, the web address.  Some realtors don’t want to work with you on this basis because they think the buyer will go directly to you, get a discount price and they won’t get paid a commission.  If you do that, how do you sleep at night?  If your intention is to cheat someone, don’t bother to read further.

The way I work with realtors is; if someone comes in cold and they bring the prospect and make the sale, they get their normal commission.  If we bring the customer in from our website(s), or other efforts, and the sale goes through, we use the realtor of our choice for filling out paperwork, and they get a reduced commission.  The percentages have to be worked out between you and the realtor(s).  You need to have your agreement with the realtor in writing so there are no disputes after the sale.
Having your own website is similar to having an MLS listing through the realtor, only it’s global.  The realtor can look at the site and if anyone comes in and asks about a home that is similar to what you have, they can take it from there, as if dealing with a new prospect.  Your site can be a lot more complete than any site you’ll ever get through a realtor, and that helps eliminate tire kickers.  

We’ve sold homes in Hawaii, the Pacific Northwest and have one for sale in New Mexico, that we’ve had offers on but turned down, since we’re in a position that we don’t need to sell.  We’re a cross between vagabonds and home bodies.  We like to settle in for a time but also feel the urge to move on occasionally.  If you do too, a website is the perfect tool

If you don’t have a website, or don’t know how to build one, it makes economic sense to have someone competent build you one for you.  All you have to do is figure the difference between the cost of the site and a realtor’s commission.

You can use the website after your home sells to sell other items and make it pay by using web page ads from Kontera, Google or Yahoo.  Or, you just want to use it as a family and friend site. I have one website server and a promotional service that I use exclusively and have links on my www.larryRmiller.com and other website(s).  
 

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About Larry Miller

I was born in Los Angeles in 1940. My father was a fighter pilot instructor during WWll and we moved from coast to coast, maybe that’s where I got the nomad in my blood. After graduating from high school in 1958 I joined the Marines. That lifestyle wasn’t for me and upon my discharge I went on with my life, and have never looked back. I worked briefly for a Caterpillar dealer in Riverside, CA before moving back to N. California where I was a welder and truck driver for a chemical company. Truck driving wasn’t my calling anymore than being in the Marines, and I went back to work for another Caterpillar dealer steam cleaning dirty tractor parts and welding. They sent me to schools, lots and lots of schools. I spent as much time going to trade schools as I did at work. I went from cleaning parts to apprentice field mechanic, to mechanic to the parts department to satellite store manager in less than two years. They wanted me to move to Sacramento and be a salesman: I moved to Oregon to learn to commune with nature. I went to work for another heavy equipment dealer and was later contacted by the World’s largest Lorraine Crane dealer and offered the position of purchasing agent and general parts manager. In 1967 I was offered a line of automotive parts and supplies and went into business for myself. My business revolved around eleven race cars that we maintained for others, driving race cars professionally and maintaining high end sports cars. I was a championship and regional champion driver. My business was the largest import parts and service, non dealer, in the state until I sold it in 1979. We went sailing in 79, first to Mexico and then Hawaii. I was an award winning Trans-Pacific sailor and sailor of the year, Hawaii, Island of Kauai. An opportunity presented itself in Hawaii during 1981 and I was back in business, importing Japanese auto body and hard parts. I also felt the pull to write and began freelancing for magazines and newspapers in 1982. My main focus in my articles is, and always has been, health, wellness and fitness. Most of us have heard the saying, “Time is all we have.” I disagree. Our health is all we have, because without our health, we have no time. I was a US Olympic team hopeful in racewalking and held all the records for the state of Hawaii. As a sponsored athlete in my forties, I finished first in nine marathons in a row in my division, qualified for the Ironman® and was the state USCF cycling champion five times in Hawaii and Oregon. Celinda and I were married in 1988 after a three year engagement. We sold our businesses and organic farm and sailed back to Oregon. After our sailboat boat was sold, we moved to Joseph, Oregon, two miles from the trailhead into the Eagle Cap Wilderness. We were caregivers for my mother the last ten years she was alive. We moved to New Mexico in 1995 because it was too cold for my mom in Oregon during the winters. Celinda designed, and I engineered and built our strawbale house. I began writing the weekly health column for a local newspaper in 1996, and still do. In 2000, I took the summer off to do a four month, 4000 mile, hike, bike and kayak odyssey. I’d been writing health, fitness and sports articles since 1982 and the journey produced a full-length, nonfiction, first person adventure book, Yol Bolsun, May There Be A Road, which can be bought from Amazon.com and others over the Internet. The summer of 2001 was spent hiking. kayaking, fishing and exploring the southwest. In 2002 Celinda and I spent the summer in Canada learning the hospitality business at a resort in preparation for doing promotion for the resort in the US. Most of 2003 was spent reestablishing the trees and landscape that had died during the stay in Canada. We had a house sitter and the house sitter had an ex-husband, and that’s a long story. In July of 2004 I did a solo kayak trip on the Snake River, taking pictures, writing articles and pencil sketching the journey. I hope to do another kayak adventure on the Snake River during the summer of 2008, on the section I missed in 2000 and 2004. In 2005, I returned to Canada to the resort where we’d spent 2002. I was supposed to be there for the month of June. I’d contacted people I’d met in 2002 and they came back to Canada to fish, hike and spend time at the resort, Echo Valley Ranch and Spa, while I was there. My one month became five and then it was off to Spain to do the El Camino de Santiago as a travel companion with one of the guests who’d returned to Canada in June. During the summer of 2006 a friend from Ireland, who I’d met in Spain the year before, came to visit in NM and we fished, hiked and explored the White Mountains of AZ. He’d never slept out in the wild in a tent before, and it was quite an experience, for both of us. My newspaper articles were put on the Internet beginning in 2002. I was asked to give public speaking engagements, photo and video presentations, on various subjects for the library in Deming, NM and continue to do so. In 2006 I videoed and produced a DVD for the Smithsonian Institute’s travel exhibit “Between Fences.” NMFILMS had a conference by invitation only, which I attended. While attending the conference, I realized that film making wasn’t what I wanted to do but I still wanted to use my sixteen years of experience and enjoyment of videoing and photography. During the winter of 2005, I discovered that no one on record had ever run from the Arizona border to the Texas border, a distance of 165 miles. During the spring and summer of 2006 I trained for the run and the run was completed in October, 2006. In late 2005, I began building and maintaining websites incorporating all the things I enjoyed about video, photography, travel and the out of doors. 2007 has been a summer of upgrading the home and property which resulted in a downgrading of my enthusiasm for being located in one place. If we don’t like what’s happening in our life, we need to change what we’re doing. Celinda and I are ready to pull up roots and move on. I guess I’ve come full circle. I’m ready to revert back to my childhood, and a nomadic lifestyle.

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