1) First – Get you ready for visitors

I will provide feedback and suggestions based upon our visits to the property on any areas that might need to be improved or changed to enhance the appeal of the house for visitors.

I will create an in-house booklet with information about the property, the community and other items that buyers might be interested in seeing. That booklet may also contain a copy of the Sellers Disclosure and property survey to show the property boundaries.

I will have one of our mortgage partners create a financing sheet for display in the house to show prospective buyers how much it would cost them a month to own it.

2) The Initial Phase – Just Listed – Getting the word out with Flyers, Booklet, Just Listed Mailings and Newspaper ads

A “Just Listed” mailing will be made to the neighborhood surrounding the home, to our buyer-interest list and to major real estate offices in the market area

A “Just Listed” ad will be placed in the appropriate HomeTown Newspapers and/or The Spinal Column and the Oakland Press

Our office may tour the house on the Tuesday morning following the listing submission, unless requested not to. This allows approximately 10-15 people from our office to become familiar with the property, so that they can answeIr questions of they are “on floor duty” when a prospective buyer calls in. many of them may already be working with buyers who are looking for a house just like yours.

I will place a Real Estate One sign and a flyer box in the yard. I will create a color flyer for the outside box and have them available inside too.

I will message the list of buyers that I’m working with to see if the house is a fit for any of them or if they know of someone looking for such a house. I will also feature your house in our monthly newsletter, which goes out to over 300 people each month, many of whom have come through our open houses in the past.

3) Get it on the Web

The listing will be entered into the MLS, where all the area agents can see it.

The MLS listing will generate an input into Realtor.com and other Web sites that take their listing feeds from the local MLS database. I will put multiple pictures of the house and interior on the MLS.

A multi-picture presentation will be created and published on the Realestateone.com site and Milford Team Web site – www.themilfordteam.com

The MLS site feeds to Realtor.com, the number 1 real estate Web site in the world, where I have an agreement through Real Estate One that allows us to enhance the listing with multiple pictures and custom presentation wording, along with headlines and a scrolling message. Studies have shown that up to 85% of potential buyers find their house on the Web first and 90% of them spend much more time (up to 299% more) on these real estate sites looking at houses with multiple pictures and virtual tours.

The house will also be on the Yahoo site (the #2 real estate site), as well as on MSN, AOL and MIRealsource.com, Homes.com, Homepages.com and RealEstateOne.com, plus other sites that take their feed from the local MLS. In addition it will be listed with pictures and a link back to a virtual tour site on CraigsList.com, one of the Internet’s biggest list-oriented sites. For a more complete list of where your home may be found on the Internet, click here.

4) Longer Term Plans/Options – Target Marketing using various REO programs

I may also choose to create an INFOLINE ad for the unit, which uses a toll free number that potential buyers can call to hear a recorded script about the listing.

I will be holding periodic open houses manned either by one of us or by other agents from our office. For the first open house I will do a mailing to the immediate neighborhood to alert neighbors

who may wish to see the house for themselves or who have friends or relatives who may be looking for a house like yours. The open houses will be posted on the MLS Web site, the realtor.com web site and on the MilfordTeam.com site, as well as other sites that pick up feeds from the MLS site. I will also be participating in the Real Estate One Open House ads programs when I schedule open houses. Ads featuring which REO houses will be open on a specific weekend are run in the Detroit Free Press, The Spinal Column and other area newspapers.

I will advertise mainly in the Gannett Hometown papers which focus on the areas that I seem to be getting the most open house traffic over the last 2 years. For a list of the papers click here. Your house might also show up in the Real Estate One company sponsored ads that are run weekly; however, inclusion in those ads is on a rotational basis, so your house will not be in every week. Company ads run in the Detroit Free Press, the Spinal Column, The Milford Times and The Observer and Eccentric.

I will evaluate the use of a program that REO participates in to create and place TV ads on local cable channels. Unlike the Home Preview Channel format, which just continually scrolls through all the listings that are being advertised, the program that REO participates in actually creates 30-second ads with pictures and a voice-over script presentation of the home. The unknown with this program is when and on what channel these ads will run, since the cable folks are allowed to use the ads when they need to fill an empty spot.