Build a Website to Sell Your Home Overseas

There are seemingly fewer buyers out there with the funds readily available to buy a home abroad, which is why competition between vendors to attract these buyers is intense!

The desire for a property abroad hasn’t eroded, but access to mortgages and funds has, therefore if you have real estate to sell, you need to do your best to attract the few buyers out there who can actually put money down on your home.

In order to do so, it is probably prudent to build a website to sell your home overseas – this will be a very effective marketing tool for the promotion of your property, and if you combine the site with the use of Google Adwords advertising you may even be able to cut out the middle man – i.e., the estate agent – and save on fees.

If you type something like ‘build a website,’ or ‘basic website design software’ into Google you will be inundated with results – i.e., nowadays it is incredibly easy to build and host a website, what’s more, chances are you know someone who will build one for you!  I say this because designing websites is a hobby for increasing numbers of people…therefore it will be simple and cheap for you to actually get a site made.  So, this article is not about how to build a website, but why build one, what to include on the website and how to make use of it to best promote and ultimately sell your home overseas.

Why Build a Website About Your Property Abroad?

As stated, there are fewer cash-ready buyers actively looking for property abroad at the current time, therefore there is more competition between vendors, agents and developers for these buyers.  So, the situation is this – you need to market your property to its very best advantage if you’re going to come out as a winner in all of this. 

To do so it will not exactly be sufficient to have an estate agent put up a card in their window – because your home will be competing against all others in their window in the same location and price bracket.  Instead you need to create the ultimate in terms of an online brochure marketing the merits of your property.  By going the extra mile you will provide anyone else you employ to help sell the home with a great tool to market it from – alternatively you will give yourself the tools you need to market your home without the need to employ an agent.

What to Put on Your Website

Your website needs to include all of the following (where appropriate): -

• Photographs of your property’s interior including all rooms, interesting features, attractive elements of the property, the kitchen and bathroom, any furniture or white goods being sold with the property and so on.

• Photographs of your property’s exterior including gardens, terraces, swimming pool, surrounding good views etc.

Hopefully it goes without saying that these images should show your property in its best light – so tidy rooms before you photograph them and make sure your exterior shots don’t include anything ugly or worrying from piles of bin bags to overhead power lines!  Whilst we’re not suggesting you should mask any ‘issues’ with your property, what we are saying is don’t draw unnecessary attention to anything that might worry off a potential buyer.  You need to get people to view your home in person, and to do so you have to present it as favourably as possible.

• A complete breakdown of what is included in the sale.

• A description of the location of the property – who lives nearby, where the nearest shops and amenities are, what facilities are in the vicinity, how far the airport is, where the nearest beach is for example – or how close it is to the ski lift it it’s a winter resort home you’re selling.

• A descriptive introduction to the property and what it’s like living there – make this describe the ‘dream’ of living in or owning your property abroad.  You’re far more likely to attract a buyer if you can make the people reading your site feel like they would be at home in your property.

Be creative with your site rather than merely factual, make it look aesthetically appealing, ensure your images are not only attractive but that they are laid out nicely on the site and that they are not too big as this will make the site take too long to load and put people off bothering with it.  You also need to ensure that the copy on the site (i.e., the words to support the pictures) is well written and that you have checked your spelling and grammar.

Include all your contact details on the site – so, an email address and phone numbers are essential.

How to Use the Website to Market Your Property Abroad

No matter how good you are at search engine optimisation, you are not likely to get your website to the top of Google for related search terms in the time frame you have for selling your house.  It’s a fact that you just have to accept!  So, your options for getting your website seen are as follows: -

• Set up a Google Adwords account and create adverts for your website that will be seen on the Google search engine and on Google approved sites that carry their adverts for your chosen search terms (such as this one.)  Adwords is a very easy and intuitive system to use – but you need to set your daily limits so that you don’t have loads of people clicking on your ad and racking you up a large bill.  What’s more, you need to choose your search terms very carefully.  If your home is in Spain you may think that all you need to do is have your advert appear every time someone types in the search phrase ‘property for sale in Spain’ in to Google.  However, the people that ‘compete’ on this phrase are likely to be developers with large budgets – you shouldn’t try and compete against them.  Instead think about what someone who wants your property might type in…how about ‘4 bed villa with pool for sale near Barcelona’ or something equally applicable to your home.  Test out phrases and keep an eye on your campaign daily.

• Give any agents you commission to sell your home the details of your website.  Get them to include it with their marketing material.

• List your website on other property abroad sites.

• Advertise your property’s website in local newspapers.

• Get a flyer together with basic details of your property and the website address and hand them out to tourists in nearby towns.

• Send the URL of your site to everyone you know and ask them to pass it on to everyone they know – network!  It may end up in someone’s email inbox who has the ready cash to buy your home abroad.

Hopefully the above gives you some ideas about building your own website to market your property abroad…good luck!