Create a Great Webpage to Sell Your Home

The majority of people in the UK who are looking to move house use the internet to find properties for sale. So it makes sense to ensure that your property is on the web if you want to sell. If you are with an estate agent, most will list your property on one of the major property portals. However more and more people, tired of paying thousands of pounds to estate agents who do little work, are voting with their feet and deciding to sell their home by themselves.

There are over 100 websites in the UK where you can advertise your home for sale, ranging from a basic text listing to a full internet estate agent service. However most will have a limit to the amount of information which you can add and the number of photographs which you can include. Often this will be much less information than in an estate agent's details.

The answer is to create your own webpage to sell your house. You don't have to be a great computer expert, and you could do it all in an evening, using this step by step plan.

Where can I host my webpage?

Maybe you have some free webspace offered by your Internet Service Provider. Now is the time to use it!If you know a little about web design you are very lucky, as all you need is some very basic knowledge of HTML and you are ready to make an effective webpage. If not, you can use a word processing package such as Microsoft Word which will convert a document to a webpage.

If you don't have webspace you can use the free webspace offered by well-known search engines such as Lycos Tripod or Yahoo Geocities. Most will have website building packages too, so that you can simply enter the information into a template and you have an instant website.

Write a concise title for your page

Write one sentence using as few words as possible which sum up your property, for example 'For Sale: Three-bedroom semi-detached house in London'. Use this as your page title.

Prepare your details

However you decide to create your webpage, prepare your details beforehand using word processing package. You can do this in your own time, it will check your spelling for you and you won't lose all your work if your browser crashes. Measure all your rooms and give the measurements in both metric and imperial. Remember to add anything interesting or unusual about the house, special about its location and mention if it is in catchment for a good school.

Take your photos

Use a digital camera to take your pictures if at all possible. You can take prints and scan them but there is always a loss of quality. Photograph the front of your house and all the best features, the nicest rooms, the best corner of the garden, the great view if you have one. Take loads. Now choose only the best few pictures and make the image sizes as small as possible. If your image manipulation software allows you to optimise for the web, do it, it makes a very big difference to download times.

Put it all together

Now put together your main webpage. Use a simple design with a pale background, dark text and go easy on the animated icons! You want people to look at your house, not be distracted by a garish design. You also want it to load fast so only put the best picture of the front of your house on this page. Add your written details. Put extra photos on separate pages, only a few to a page. Use informative links, for example 'Click here for pictures of our large mature garden' is good, 'more pictures' won't invite many people to look.

Give them even more!

There are several websites which offer maps of the UK which you can link to. Help prospective buyers find you easily by adding this to your page. If you know a bit about technical drawing you could make your own floor plans and include them in the website - this would be a real bonus as they are still quite unusual. Finally if you are a wizard with a video camera you could have a go at making your own virtual tour.

Finally, add your contact details

Now include your phone number and an email address. You may want to use a free 'disposable' email address for this, because putting your email address on the web will tend to attract spam. Alternatively there are many websites that will produce a scrambled version of your email address which will work perfectly but cannot be read by spammers.

Now all you need to do is upload your website. You can submit the website to search engines and don't forget to include the website address (URL) with your emails, flyers, newspaper advertisements, on your 'For Sale' sign, and link to it from FSBO websites.

Jacqui O'Brien is the owner of http://www.ahomeofmyown.co.uk the directory of UK Private Seller property websites where you can also list your own home webpage for free.

The 1960s Buff & Hensman-designed Wong House has a pool, a walled garden and downtown and ocean views.

It seems as though actress Scarlett Johansson had no sooner sold her old place in the Hollywood Hills than she and her husband, actor Ryan Reynolds, closed on a house in Los Feliz for $2.9 million.

Completed a few years ago, a Normandy-style estate was built to look a century old.

Glen and Linda Keane felt guilty about tearing down the O'Melveny family home. After all, John O'Melveny was part of a group of Los Angeles businessmen who formed Lake Arrowhead Co. in the 1920s and oversaw the lake's development into a popular resort destination.

The mortgage giant quietly launches the HomePath program, which offers subprime-era terms for buyers: minimal down payments, no appraisals, no mortgage insurance and lower minimum credit scores.

If you're a buyer with little cash or a small-scale investor looking for a deal on a foreclosed house, a little-publicized national lending program could be just what you need this fall.

How some of our previously featured properties have fared in the sales market.

Buff & Hensman-designed beach house

Lenders lose an estimated $310 million annually in undervalued short-sale transactions, according to a study released in August.

Question: I am fed up with my homeowners association and successive boards for sabotaging owner requests for records and refusing to fix maintenance problems in common areas that directly affect individual units. I believe I have no other choice than to sue the association and the boards. What are the steps I have to take?

Keeping tenant out over concerns of illegal activities may be viewed as a 'constructive eviction.' Such moves as changing the locks to prevent access can bring significant penalties.

Question: I own a couple of houses that I rent out for extra income. Unfortunately, they are not in the best part of our town. I have a tenant living in one of them who may be dealing drugs or doing something else illegal because the police have arrested him several times. Every time he is arrested he makes bail and returns to the house in a day or so. Even though he pays the rent on time, I realize that I can't continue to allow him to live in my house. My plan is to change the locks the next time he is arrested, so he can't come back into the house. I know that I need to protect his property inside the house if I do this, but my plan is to move his belongings into a storage locker. I can't afford a lawyer to file an eviction case, so this is my only alternative. Will I be OK if I do this?

July's increase from June in the National Assn. of Realtors' gauge for previously owned residences follows two straight months of declines and a report that sales of such homes dived 27.2%.

An index of home purchase contracts for previously owned dwellings unexpectedly increased 5.2% in July over June, the National Assn. of Realtors said Thursday, a modest note of good news for the U.S. housing market.

Treasury bond yields, which influence the home-loan rates, have surged since Tuesday.

Mortgage rates fell for the 10th time in 11 weeks, setting fresh record lows, Freddie Mac reported Thursday. But a rebound in Treasury yields in the last two days raises the possibility that home-loan interest costs won't fall again next week.

The home builder's stock soars 11% after an announcement that there will be no action taken as result of an investigation into the company's accounting procedures.

Shares of Los Angeles-based KB Home soared on Wednesday after the home builder said an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission into the company's accounting and disclosure procedures had concluded and no enforcement action would be taken.