Daily progress...

A dear friend of mine has asked me to help him sell his property in France. Along with listing it with agents in France I am beginning to create a presence for it on Social Media. I have now started a simple blog as though the property itself is speaking. I have also built a simple website which you can visit via the blog www.theoldgallery.blogspot.com I have also started a Twitter account, again as though the house has created it, which is @the_oldgallery I have also created a Picassa account and started to add all the photographs and videos I can of the house. It is a beautiful house as you can see www.theoldgallery.bravesites.com and as it doubles up as a holiday let so it is very attractive to a new owner that would like an investment as well. There is a slight difference to me advertising and opening up this house on social media than perhaps yourselves, as you are living in the house. My friend who is selling this property in France has now moved back to the UK. Whilst I have visited the house many times I can't give a running commentary of actually being in the house and at the moment I can't a build a regular picture of the surrounding area. So in this instance I may look to consider further options as well as the social media route. I would like to affirm again that it is sensible to adopt the usual avenues when selling a house as well as bringing the property to life on Twitter, You Tube and Facebook. By usual routes I am referring to an estate agent, finding a cash buyer on the internet or even auction. It all depends on your situation and how motivated you are to sell. However the most important thing to remember is the more you open your home and it's life, the more information there is for people to make an informed decision about buying. Whether that is through an agent or a cash buyer or a friend of a friend who finds you on Facebook. So the idea with my friends house in France is that I will open up as much of it as I can. To aim to do something each day is the goal. A tweet as often as you can, a blog post from the house maybe once a day if you can or at the very least a couple of times a week. To keep the flow in Facebook you will need to post there most days as well. Remember though you do not want to over do it on your own Facebook account. Your own friends may become a little tired if you are only ever taking about your house. This is why I recommend talking from the perspective of the house itself. That way you can make it funny if the house keeps talking. You can create a dialogue with the house yourself. Facebook is also about creating new networks as well. By joining groups and exploring you will find people outside of your own circles that will be looking for a house like yours. I will also be exploring the routes of finding out what our homes can offer a developer. This is important to beware of. There is no need to fear the property developer! In fact the property world is filled with very contentious people. The reason for that in my opinion is because property is a people's business. To get on with people you need to be nice and in my experience property development on a single unit scale is dominated by friendly individuals who would like to create a win for you as well as well as a win for themselves. But hey, we are all living in the real world and we know there are sharks in any business. There are also multi billionaires in the property world who can be a little other wordly and who control many people underneath them who also appear to be impossible to connect with. But they tend not to deal with single units such as one house. Unless your 15 acre garden is a prime development site, which is why it is important to know all aspects of what your property means to all people. So when you are assessing all aspects of your house it is important to research what opportunities there may be to a developer. This will of course open the market for you to a new audience and may well increase what you can ask for your property. But that is for a later post. For now I would like you to have a look at the progress I am making with the Old Gallery in France. You will notice the website I am using is free. It is hosted with bravesites.com which means you are using the domain name at no cost to you and the website is hosted for free so it has the name bravesites in the domain. The main reason in my mind to own a domain name is for a business that will be running for some time. In this instance you will need some security that the website will not disappear if the host goes down. When selling a house the website will only be relevant and needed until the house is sold. So it is less important to have a permanent domain name and hosting. So have a play. Start your blog on Blogger.com It is so easy to build one. The website is also very self explanatory to build. Why Blogger over Wordpress? Wordpress is great if you would like to build a complex site with gadgets and plug ins. A simple Blog is all that is needed and Blogger is very easy to understand and follow. I would love to know how you are doing. If you have any questions at all please let me know. To your sale and success.