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If I was searching using list my house, unless I knew to go to $400k, your place wouldn't come up due to their lousy price search features. If I do search to $400k, yours is the only one that comes up. The page you have there (http://www.listmyhouse.com/view_listing.php?house_id=100 - broken link) looks good & has a lot of info.
Going to the page in your profile, (broken link) I'm not so nuts about that, and think that if you can spend a little time on it, it would be a useful site for the buyer.
Is it possible to work on the first few lines of text? You have different fonts as well as bold, italic and colored text. I would reformat something similar to what I have below.
FOR SALE 2 Gibbs Avenue, Newport, RI "Gibbs Gardens Condominiums" Unit "A"
MLS#743931 Price: $ 309,900 REDUCED ! Well BELOW assessed value (what you asked in May may not be relevent)
Bedrooms: 2+ Bathrooms: 1 Full 1 Half Approx. Sq Ft: 1413
Contact:
email:
MOTIVATED SELLER! BRING ALL OFFERS!
I like the web page idea and may borrow it. I like your pictures, from what I can see of them, and think if you made the thumbnails clickable, it would be more user friendly. I went there the other day looking to see where I could find a link to larger pictures. I then got to the bottom where it says aa Picture Index and Virtual Tours for Gibbs Gardens Unit A - I click on it, it then goes to an index. I couldn't open the virtual tour. If you are going to keep it like that, add what program is needed and give a link to it. I then find the actual photos, which IMO should be 1st because when I was there the other day, didn't realize you had stills and VT's.
pictures - blurr the license plate of the cars
round table, too many place settings, they look crammed in. Second Floor Pictures of Unit A
Stairway - not needed
1st master bedroom picture - is it possible to do something with the window treatments? I would like it better if it was only the scarf or the lace curtains.
I would move the chairs out of the room for the photo. As a buyer, it appears smallish, plus it appears you have a twin bed, which makes me wonder if I could put a larger bed in there.
Hang the picture that is on the headboard.
The large walk in closet - I would stage that a bit if you're going to show it. Is it possible to put a closet organizer in there instead of the dresser? You also don't need all of the photo you have of it.
1st photo of 2nd room needs to either be retaken or removed. You could also benefit from staging it a little, removing some of the bins.
3rd floor - TV room - remove some of the props to make it appear larger.
I think you have a cute condo that looks like it was updated. The kitchen is very nice. I think the amount of photos that you have could be a killer because as a buyer, I feel like I've seen the whole thing online and don't need to walk it. You've left no space for me to wonder about, making me need to get out of my chair. Pick the best photos, then take the rest off. If you feel like you want to test the waters, make a new page, saving the old with a new name so that you don't have to redo it. I would rather see one page with sections like your main page the way you have the table set up, or do something similar to
Kitchen - with blurb
2 of the best pictures, using scaled down pics that open larger..
living room - blurb
same thing as above
If you feel that the buyer wants to read all of the text you have, maybe put it on another page, but I would make the 1st page with less text, and also possibly a bigger font. There is a lot to read on the main page, and as someone buying, I don't have time to read everything. I want the main information and photos. If I am interested, then I may choose to read, but on 1st looks, I wouldn't know where to read 1st with all of the text.
You can go to any MLS site, Realtor.com, Yahoo, MSN, Zillow.com and do a search for condos in Newport between, let's say $300k and $350k and mine will come up. There is no need to go to ListMyHouse.com. I can't do anything about that website.
As far as my website goes, I've been reading so many real estate listings in the Charleston area and got the idea of the layout from a KellerWilliam agent's MLS site.
I agree with you about thumbnails. If I knew how to put them in so you could click them on and they'd expand, I would.
Your mentioning that I might have too many pictures was a concern of mine too. I thought exactly what you said might be a reason that might make people think there was no need to go see it. On the other hand, as it has turned out, I've only had really serious people come see it, so it has cut down on my having to run around and clean my house
for showings to people who are just tire kickers. Also during one open house I had, a realtor and her husband came by and they said that in this market lots of pictures and a virtual tour were IMPERATIVE. The husband said that he didn't even bother to read the listing if their weren't lots of pictures at minimum. They said that agents weren't even bothering with open houses because so many people nowadays just look on line and decide based on what they see on-line whether they want to see a property or not.
The phrase about the price being below assessed value has nothing to do with what my original asking price is. The assessed value is for tax purposes and is a number the cily came up with... it is much more than what I'm asking so I don't really understand what you meant by that.
I included a picture of the stairway leading to the third floor loft so that people could see that it is steep. One thing I thought was a waste of time that my realtor did last year was set up showings of the unit next door which is almost identical and showed it to elderly people with bad needs who could not negotiate those stairs to the third floor. So it is there for disclusure reasons.
Last but not least, my LOWBALL OFFER Buyers reappeared and raised their lowball offer from 3 weeks ago by another $5000, meanwhile another realtor called and has clients coming from New York looking for a summer home who want to see it this Saturday, so tomorrow, I'll be cleaning and weeding and trimming shrubs etc (while keeping my fingers crossed).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Roselvr
If I was searching using list my house, unless I knew to go to $400k, your place wouldn't come up due to their lousy price search features. If I do search to $400k, yours is the only one that comes up. The page you have there (http://www.listmyhouse.com/view_listing.php?house_id=100 - broken link) looks good & has a lot of info.
Going to the page in your profile, I'm not so nuts about that, and think that if you can spend a little time on it, it would be a useful site for the buyer.
Is it possible to work on the first few lines of text? You have different fonts as well as bold, italic and colored text. I would reformat something similar to what I have below.
FOR SALE 2 Gibbs Avenue, Newport, RI "Gibbs Gardens Condominiums" Unit "A"
MLS#743931 Price: $ 309,900 REDUCED ! Well BELOW assessed value (what you asked in May may not be relevent)
Bedrooms: 2+ Bathrooms: 1 Full 1 Half Approx. Sq Ft: 1413
Contact:
email:
MOTIVATED SELLER! BRING ALL OFFERS!
I like the web page idea and may borrow it. I like your pictures, from what I can see of them, and think if you made the thumbnails clickable, it would be more user friendly. I went there the other day looking to see where I could find a link to larger pictures. I then got to the bottom where it says aa Picture Index and Virtual Tours for Gibbs Gardens Unit A - I click on it, it then goes to an index. I couldn't open the virtual tour. If you are going to keep it like that, add what program is needed and give a link to it. I then find the actual photos, which IMO should be 1st because when I was there the other day, didn't realize you had stills and VT's.
pictures - blurr the license plate of the cars
round table, too many place settings, they look crammed in. Second Floor Pictures of Unit A
Stairway - not needed
1st master bedroom picture - is it possible to do something with the window treatments? I would like it better if it was only the scarf or the lace curtains.
I would move the chairs out of the room for the photo. As a buyer, it appears smallish, plus it appears you have a twin bed, which makes me wonder if I could put a larger bed in there.
Hang the picture that is on the headboard.
The large walk in closet - I would stage that a bit if you're going to show it. Is it possible to put a closet organizer in there instead of the dresser? You also don't need all of the photo you have of it.
1st photo of 2nd room needs to either be retaken or removed. You could also benefit from staging it a little, removing some of the bins.
3rd floor - TV room - remove some of the props to make it appear larger.
I think you have a cute condo that looks like it was updated. The kitchen is very nice. I think the amount of photos that you have could be a killer because as a buyer, I feel like I've seen the whole thing online and don't need to walk it. You've left no space for me to wonder about, making me need to get out of my chair. Pick the best photos, then take the rest off. If you feel like you want to test the waters, make a new page, saving the old with a new name so that you don't have to redo it. I would rather see one page with sections like your main page the way you have the table set up, or do something similar to
Kitchen - with blurb
2 of the best pictures, using scaled down pics that open larger..
living room - blurb
same thing as above
If you feel that the buyer wants to read all of the text you have, maybe put it on another page, but I would make the 1st page with less text, and also possibly a bigger font. There is a lot to read on the main page, and as someone buying, I don't have time to read everything. I want the main information and photos. If I am interested, then I may choose to read, but on 1st looks, I wouldn't know where to read 1st with all of the text.
You can go to any MLS site, Realtor.com, Yahoo, MSN, Zillow.com and do a search for condos in Newport between, let's say $300k and $350k and mine will come up. There is no need to go to ListMyHouse.com. I can't do anything about that website.
I also had the realtor.com search open yesterday, but after typing all that out, had to stop. I didn't know how popular listmyhouse is, but figured I'd mention it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by emilybh
As far as my website goes, I've been reading so many real estate listings in the Charleston area and got the idea of the layout from a KellerWilliam agent's MLS site.
I agree with you about thumbnails. If I knew how to put them in so you could click them on and they'd expand, I would.
I'd be glad to help you with that, it's actually pretty easy. How are you editing that page? Did you use front page or a web based editor? Look here for an (broken link) HTML cheat sheet. Look at Graphics and Sound - then Display Image gives you the tags to show the image, like what you have. Now, look at Dimensions - where the ? is, you would change it to a number. Thumbs are usually 100 to 200, depending on the picture. You can download free thumbnail makers that will reduce it for you or you can do it by hand. I have a program called MGI Photosuite, that will reduce the image proportionatly.
*I just had a thought. If you go to your listing on realtor.com, click the pictures so that you see the thumbnail page, save the thumbs to your hard drive, then upload them to the web site. You then have instant thumbs! I will put the thumb/picture code below
Do you have Word? I used to insert a table, then insert an image & resize it. You can then link the image. If you save the word file as HTML, then let it open in IE, click on view, then source, you will see the new code.
Your mentioning that I might have too many pictures was a concern of mine too. I thought exactly what you said might be a reason that might make people think there was no need to go see it. On the other hand, as it has turned out, I've only had really serious people come see it, so it has cut down on my having to run around and clean my house for showings to people who are just tire kickers. Also during one open house I had, a realtor and her husband came by and they said that in this market lots of pictures and a virtual tour were IMPERATIVE.
The husband said that he didn't even bother to read the listing if their weren't lots of pictures at minimum. They said that agents weren't even bothering with open houses because so many people nowadays just look on line and decide based on what they see on-line whether they want to see a property or not.
The amount one considers a lot is different to everyone. IMO 12 is usually enough, then I would use a mix within the virtual tour. Between the two, it should cover it. I would rather see 12 good pictures, then more pictures with bad quality photos mixed in. Some of the photos in the 1st link aren't needed (one entrance, would keep the patio, get rid of a few yard shots.) and if you look at them, (broken link) will see you have doubles (trash/parking).
You want to make sure that the shots you have are the best ones and that your space looks inviting. Last week we had a couple come through my house. When they walked in the door they said the online photos do not do my house justice, I don't doubt this is true for some of your rooms too. I ended up staging our living room, took new pics & gave them to my agent, he added them but left the old up I'm now looking for a pro to come out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by emilybh
The phrase about the price being below assessed value has nothing to do with what my original asking price is. The assessed value is for tax purposes and is a number the cily came up with... it is much more than what I'm asking so I don't really understand what you meant by that.
From that page:
Price: $ 309,900 REDUCED ! Well BELOW assessed value and even farther below original asking price at end of May!
The posts I've read at various real estate forums all say that the original asking price at end of May has nothing to do with what the price is / should be now. You can say that it's lower then assessed value, but mentioning that today's price is much lower then May not only dates how long you've been for sale, it may say to some that it was over priced to begin with; otherwise why didn't it sell then? Just throwing in something to think about.
If I go to Google & put your MLS in, the gibbs web site comes up - which is good, you coded the page correctly for crawlers to come. This is why I would polish it up. You've done a great job making it, and who knows, it just might be the site that sells your house.
According to realtor.com there are 441 available properties in 02840 - 47 that match my search terms. Taking out single family homes, there are 23 left.
Did you realize that you have 2 listings? One is for $300k, the other for $309k. Is one right and the other not?
Quote:
Originally Posted by emilybh
Last but not least, my LOWBALL OFFER Buyers reappeared and raised their lowball offer from 3 weeks ago by another $5000, meanwhile another realtor called and has clients coming from New York looking for a summer home who want to see it this Saturday, so tomorrow, I'll be cleaning and weeding and trimming shrubs etc (while keeping my fingers crossed).
Keep us posted. Hopefully you'll have a buyer!
thumbnail code
If I did it right, thumbnail code should look something like this
the 1st is the link to the larger picture, the 2nd would be the one that shows on the web page, and in this case, would be the thumbnail. In the 2nd example, you can see I resized the image with width & height
Wow!Thanks for the HTML code and the links Roselvr! You sound like you must be a PhD level website builder. Do you do it professionally? I just, as you can see, do it for my own needs. I have another site for my insurance agency which I would love to work on with a view to getting higher rankings with the search engines.
BAck in the days (8 or 9 years ago) when meta tags helped you get noticed, I found a website that told you how many to put in and how much repetition was permitted and I did what was recommended and a few weeks later, my insurance site was number 1 ABOVE Rhode Island Blue Cross on the first page of Alta Vista and Yahoo and Excite (and I didn't even have a domain name back then -- it was a free space on AOL---and the site was built with AOL Press), but now the meta tags i guess are considered spam and can hurt your rankings. Do you know about search engine optimization and what's the best strategy these days? I know Google has their own strict guidlines for their spider to recognize your page. I really hope more people use Yahoo and MSN because those engines still recognize my site.
Anyway, I digress...I built the site with FrontPage2000 although I have Frontpage2003 but can't make heads or tails of it so I'm back to using the earlier version. It could take me the better part of a whole day to successfully put in the thumbnails. I have no problem cutting and pasting the code you gave me but it sounds like it's going to take a lot more work if I have to get into putting in tables as whenever I put in a table, it seems to mess up the orientation of the whole rest of the site and takes me several MORE hours to fix that.
So before I delve into a project like that I have to do other things that are more pressing (like finish doing my taxes) and get my house ready for the showing on Sat. Thanks!
Wow!Thanks for the HTML code and the links Roselvr! You sound like you must be a PhD level website builder. Do you do it professionally? I just, as you can see, do it for my own needs. I have another site for my insurance agency which I would love to work on with a view to getting higher rankings with the search engines.
BAck in the days (8 or 9 years ago) when meta tags helped you get noticed, I found a website that told you how many to put in and how much repetition was permitted and I did what was recommended and a few weeks later, my insurance site was number 1 ABOVE Rhode Island Blue Cross on the first page of Alta Vista and Yahoo and Excite (and I didn't even have a domain name back then -- it was a free space on AOL---and the site was built with AOL Press), but now the meta tags i guess are considered spam and can hurt your rankings. Do you know about search engine optimization and what's the best strategy these days? I know Google has their own strict guidlines for their spider to recognize your page. I really hope more people use Yahoo and MSN because those engines still recognize my site.
Anyway, I digress...I built the site with FrontPage2000 although I have Frontpage2003 but can't make heads or tails of it so I'm back to using the earlier version. It could take me the better part of a whole day to successfully put in the thumbnails. I have no problem cutting and pasting the code you gave me but it sounds like it's going to take a lot more work if I have to get into putting in tables as whenever I put in a table, it seems to mess up the orientation of the whole rest of the site and takes me several MORE hours to fix that.
So before I delve into a project like that I have to do other things that are more pressing (like finish doing my taxes) and get my house ready for the showing on Sat. Thanks!
Self taught here. I use all sorts of tricks to get out of doing things like making thumbs. The way I learned was probably harder, but I learned different ways to do things, wish I knew how to make web pages that you see today. Maybe one day.
Do a google for website analyzer - I don't see the one I usually use and of course the link is on my computer that won't boot. I see google has one, looks like it is tied into gmail. If you don't have gmail and want an invite, I can send you one.
With Front Page you should be able to save the site, then open it in front page. Next, the pictures you have, just resize them using the corner of the picture. That will put the code in itself. You then right click edit picture properties and add the larger pictures URL. I also have front page on the dead computer. Hopefully I can get it running today.
You can also do a google for front page tutorials.
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I'm now looking for a pro to come out.
