In addition to putting out yard signs and holding an open house to attract buyers, you may want to consider including your home in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) for your area. The MLS is a virtual bulletin board of the hundreds or thousands of homes being sold by local real estate agents. Formerly printed in hard copy form and distributed to area real estate offices each week, MLS is now online and available to search by both agents and the buying public.

Some studies suggest that being listed in a local MLS can increase the speed with which a home is sold. Although how much more quickly is unclear, a listing in the MLS will surely increase the number of buyers who see your home is for sale. For that reason, it is an excellent marketing tool.

Real estate associations nationwide manage the MLS for their area, controlling which properties qualify to be included. Only properties being sold by member agents may be listed—a requirement designed to put FSBOs at a disadvantage and to increase the value of an agent. However, there are ways to get around this.

The MLS’s biggest advantage is its reach—anyone shopping for a home in your area can find information about your home through a search on your local MLS if it’s listed there. Thousands of area real estate agents will also take note of your home if it meets the needs of one of their clients and is in the system. But getting listed in the system can be quite a challenge for FSBOs, unless they sign on with a site like www.forsalebyowner.com, where they have the option to be listed on an MLS for a flat fee.

Some sellers may argue that an ad in the newspaper accomplishes the same objective, but unless you run continuous ads, you may be at a disadvantage—out-of-town buyers, for instance, may not subscribe to the local paper, but they can easily go online and check for listings. MLS listings are available online 24-hours-a-day, generally for at least six months, or for as long as it is represented by an agent.

Major cities and regions across the nation have their own MLS, which makes it easier for homebuyer and sellers to connect (see the following figure).

Check out your local MLS by doing a search on the web using the keyword “MLS” and your city or town name. On your local MLS website, you’ll find a wealth of information about your area and virtually all the houses, condos, townhouses, mobile homes, and vacant lots now on the market.

With just a few keystrokes, you can identify homes in your zip code or on your street that are currently available. Frequently such listings also include photos of the exterior and interior of the home, helping buyers rule in or rule out homes even before they take a live tour. Detailed information about the home’s layout and its features is also presented on the MLS site, in addition to photos.

Use of the MLS also effectively screens out disinterested buyers before they ever arrive at your door—they’ve already seen photos of most of the rooms, and now they’re interested in seeing it in person.

Putting aside all the advantages of inclusion in the MLS system, the one con is the cost. Most MLS systems require that you agree to co-op an agent if they are responsible for finding you a buyer, which can increase your costs by thousands of dollars, potentially. There are strict rules for which homes can be listed in the MLS, the most important of which is that the home must be represented by a real estate agent who will be paid a commission for their services. Which means you may have to agree to pay 2 to 3 percent of the home’s sale price in exchange for inclusion in your local MLS. In almost every market, it’s virtually impossible to be included in the MLS unless an agent posts the listing there. However, there are also agents willing to get your home listed for a flat fee of a few hundred dollars. Do a search on some of the FSBO websites to locate these agents. Signing up for a help-you-sell FSBO service, such as America’s Choice, is another way to get access to your local MLS; for an additional fee of a few hundred dollars, services like America’s Choice will represent you as your agent and get you listed.

On www.forsalebyowner.com, you also have an MLS option where affiliated agents list homes but do not charge a commission to the seller. The only agent left to pay is the buyer’s agent, if they have one.

And the truth is that you still have an excellent chance of selling your home without an MLS listing if you are using a combination of other marketing methods. Your yard sign, for instance, is possibly the most important, and most effective, marketing tool—even more effective than the MLS where local buyers are concerned. Although the Internet is a very popular search tool for home buyers, drive-bys are used even more frequently early on in the process, to help them scope out particular neighborhoods; a well-placed yard sign can prove more useful than an online listing. Open houses, neighborhood networking, newspaper advertising, and direct marketing to relocation professionals can all pay off just as well or better than an MLS listing.

For this reason, an attractive, legible sign can make a big difference. In fact, between 10 and 20 percent of the calls about your home will be based on your sign, according to ForSaleByOwner.com. A cheap, unattractive sign will detract from your home’s appearance and may make buyers leery about going inside.

An MLS listing is no guarantee of success—it simply guarantees that thousands of agents and home buyers will have access to information about your home.

If you like the enhanced exposure that online listings offer but don’t want to commit to coughing up thousands of dollars in commissions, there are a number of other real estate listing services to consider. Many offer advertising packages costing less than $1,000 that include setting up a website or preparing an online description, while others specialize in getting you into your local MLS for a few hundred dollars up front. Some of those flat fee MLS services require you agree to cover an agent’s 2 to 3 percent commission, while others don’t.

Check out the Internet Real Estate Digest at www.ired.com for a list of home selling links, including FSBO sites, mortgage lenders, and market data (see the following figure).

Check out several different sites before you commit to advertising on any—some do a better job than others of marketing themselves. Do a search for a property in your area and see how many homes are listed, both to see what kinds of properties they currently represent, and to get an idea of how aggressive the site is at attracting buyers. Having an online presence can be a big plus, but only if buyers can find you electronically. Otherwise, it’s a waste of money.

No matter which service you decide to sign with, make sure your advertising fee includes assistance in preparing and uploading a web page for your home. Some sites may give a template and instructions for you to follow while others may provide a list of information needed, which they use to create the page for you.

Information you’ll want to be sure is available online at your property’s homepage includes:

Additional photos of the interior of your home, perhaps available in a pop-up window, or a virtual tour, are also extremely desirable features to have in your advertising contract (see the following figure). Again, buyers who have already seen such photos and ask for a tour are that much closer to buying your home.

Whether part of the MLS or not, making information about your home available electronically, on the Internet, greatly increases the number of people likely to hear about its availability.

If you decide to forgo an MLS listing, that doesn’t mean you should skip the Internet altogether. In addition to local MLS websites, there are probably hundreds of websites devoted to FSBO listings. For less than it generally costs to get an MLS listing, you can have your home profiled online at a FSBO-focused website. Some of the top sites include:

Some websites have a geographic specialty, which focus on FSBOs in certain areas. Some examples of localized FSBO sites include:

If you live in or just outside a metropolitan area, see if there are local FSBO sites with decent web traffic. If you live in a rural area, it may be tougher to find a local or regionalized FSBO site, but you can still investigate searchable national FSBO websites.

Inclusion in an established website visited regularly by potential buyers is a smart goal, but what if you don’t find such a website in your area? Or at a price you’re comfortable paying? Then build your own website. Because your home’s information is not included in a database of properties, it won’t come up in any real estate searches, but there is still value in listing a web page on your yard sign, in your flyers, and in your newspaper classified.

Websites that will help you build and host your own website, some for free, include:

You can also invest in a web design package that provides templates to lead you through the process of building your own web page. Some package names include:

Although saving money by creating your own web page sounds like a great option, keep in mind that unless you’re very familiar with the Internet and web design, it may take you many hours to set up a web page the way you want it. Depending on how much time you have available to commit to this process, you might want to select an online advertising package that includes web page design. For just a few more dollars, you could save countless hours in front of the computer.

A web page advertising your home for sale is essentially an electronic version of a listing sheet, which is an essential real estate document. A listing sheet can be a starting point for a web page, or a standalone marketing tool.

A listing sheet is a property fact sheet used to market your home. In addition to serving as a handout during home tours, a listing sheet can also help you organize your thoughts for a web page.

Information you’ll want to be sure is on your listing sheet includes:

A listing sheet aims to answer 95 percent of all basic questions buyers may have about a home’s location and features to help the buyer determine up front whether it meets their needs. And if you’ve done a good job of writing the listing sheet, prospective buyers will want to check out your home to have the remaining 5 percent of their questions answered in person.

When a buyer is interested in your home, they want specifics. Specific square footage measurements, specific lot size details, and specific feature details—specifics about what they will get if they purchase your home.

But buyers are also concerned with what it will cost, in total, to own it. That means you need to provide last year’s total taxes—property, school, city, and so forth. You should also pull out, or call your utility company and request, a total figure for what you paid last year for your utilities—gas, electric, and oil, if applicable. Because higher winter heating costs raise gas bills for part of the year in the northeast, you should also divide that total by 12 to provide an average monthly utility bill—that’s much better than telling a buyer that their utilities will set them back $80 a month in the summer and $380 in the winter.

Another number, or percentage, you’ll want to provide is the typical home appreciation for your area. If housing prices in your neck of the woods have been rising steadily by 5 or 10 percent a year, point that out to buyers. Or if your area’s prices have held steady in a declining market, that would be a big plus for your home. Don’t assume buyers know these statistics, especially if they’re moving to the area. Dazzle them with numbers that suggest your home is a great buy.

To look at home appreciation reports for 320 different U.S. cities, visit http://netscape.homestore.com/Finance/HousePriceIndex/default.asp?poe=homestore (see the following figure).

You’ve undoubtedly heard the adage: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” That statement applies perfectly here, with listing sheets.

No matter how long your list of features, or how appealing your description of your home, in the end, buyers want to see a picture of it. On paper, a contemporary home with cathedral ceilings and hardwood floors may sound perfect to a buyer, but after having a look at the exterior, he or she may decide it’s not quite their style. Likewise, a cozy three-bedroom cottage with built-in charm may sound too small for buyers set on a home with room to grow, but a picture of the home tells a different story, and they’re hooked. Home sales can be made or broken based on a home’s photos.

While interior photos are great to have, a buyer has to like the exterior before he or she will even consider looking inside. So make sure your exterior shot is as good as it can be.

When it comes to homes, buyers often want properties with charm and character—qualities frequently found in older homes. But they don’t want to be saddled with huge repairs or maintenance costs. How well you’ve maintained, or even upgraded, the property while you’ve owned it can be a big selling point. The more you’ve done to improve the home’s condition, the less potential buyers will worry about what kinds of work they may be required to do.

So, if you’ve done any of the following while you’ve lived in your home, be sure to include it on your listing sheet:

Do all you can to give an image of an up-to-date, well-maintained home. The less work buyers expect to have to do, the higher the price they may be willing to pay.

Buyers are also willing to pay more for a home in an area that has valuable amenities and years of price appreciation. Play up your home’s location to the hilt whenever you can by raving about its convenience, community resources, great school system, low crime rate, reasonable property taxes, or proximity to desirable attractions, such as a park or lake. Add to your listing sheet whatever location benefits you can come up with, keeping in mind the wide range of buyers who may be looking at your place.

Young professionals may be more concerned about how quickly they can get to work than whether the school district has won any awards. Families with young children may be more interested in how close parks are than how many bars and clubs there are in the area. And safety and price appreciation may be top-of-mind for older couples.

Because you just never know what buyers will be attracted to, try to mention a range of your location’s advantages to appeal to a broad cross-section of buyers.

Listing sheets should be made available to anyone who tours your home by placing them in plain sight on the kitchen table or front hall table. They should also be passed around to others who may come into contact with buyers, such as agents, brokers, headhunters, mortgage lenders, and whoever else you can think of.

Community bulletin boards are also a good idea, especially if the boards are read frequently. But don’t limit yourself here—place them anywhere and everywhere. You just never know where the right buyer will be.

The Least You Need to Know