Nyassa, did you put an ad on Craigslist?  Also, is the home not on a street/road with lots of traffic?  Try putting an OH sign on a street with more traffic (also include the address & your cell #) - even if it means printing it from your printer and taping it to the OH sign.  Also, you might want to rewrite your ads.  Maybe, they're not catching buyers attention.

If the home is priced correctly, sometimes, there's just not a lot more you can do.  It sounds like the buyers in your area have plenty of choice of homes to purchase and it's going to take extraordinary measures to get yours noticed.

Have you tried Craig's List?  Also, make sure the listing is on your website and syndicated (which I'm sure you've already done). You can try a paying for "featured" on Point2 or spotlight on Google.

Could be worth a shot.

Oh yes.  You can also try pay per click on Google or Yahoo.  You can limit to a specific area, so you're not paying a ton of money advertising all over the country.  I have a Bed & Breakfast/House listing that I need to advertise all over the country and it's costing me about $50/mo. for pay per click.  It's a unique property and is taking a while to sell.

If your town allows it, make sure you have plenty of directional signs out with your phone number.  You can also subscribe to an 800# hot line for recorded information about the home and have that number on your signs.  If you can designate a separate voice mail box on your business phone for this purpose, that would work, too.  The thing about the 800# hotline is that they usually capture the caller information and you can get back to them if they don't leave a message.  It seems kind of sneaky because they wouldn't call if they wanted to talk to someone, but you have to strike within 15 minutes of the call to have any hope of finding out what they need.  You might pick them up as a buyer client for some other home on the market.

Nyassa (beautiful name!),

You must have a Real Estate section in your local newspaper.  Ours has a reporter who features one home every Sunday.  She gets to choose what she features, but the ones she chooses get a lot of exposure.  We generally submit some of our most unique properties and cross our fingers.  If there is no reporter like this, maybe you could write an article and submit it?  Could become a new avenue of exposure for you too?

Great idea, Cathy!

Tranquilizer darts! Watch for walkers in the apartements complexes near by and go hunting!

Just kidding, but do target apartments near by, these are full of what I call future buyers that don't know they are ready to buy until you teach them.

Open houses in our area stink.  And I mean just stink.  I'm thinking it might possibly pick up for a month or two with people coming in to town when their schools close and such, but other than that...open houses here just don't do well.  I don't care how many balloons, etc you put out.  The only thing that does work is we have an open house/YARD SALE/BBQ.  They come for the bargins and free hot dogs and water but quite a few of them walk through the house, we pick up leads and they leave with that ever invaluable word of mouth running.  :)

Nyassa, it just might be too early.  I noticed your post was at 2:07.  We notice most people stop by just when we are ready to close up.  Marcia and I use to do 1-4, now we do 2-6 with most people coming by that last two hours.  I am really surprised you didn't get the neighbors.  They love to see how their neighbors decorated!

Advertising in the paper doesn't do much here.  Lots of signs and even neighbor invites works better.  Bring them in from as many ways as you can and feed off of other open houses in the neighborhood.  

Jana

Here in Jacksonville we have an 11.2 months of inventory of homes for sale.  While price definitely IS a factor, the other factor is patience - and luck.

Within a 1.5 mile radius of where I live, there are 185 homes on the market.  Within 2 miles - 385 homes. Sellers price their home at a reasonable price and hope for the best.  Not enough buyers.

Open houses = wasted time for sellers and agent IMO.  Less than 1% of homes sell at an open house which means you'd have to have MORE than 100 visitors per day to beat the odds.

Good luck!

Belinda,

How do you target a specific area for the Google-pay per click?  I am thinking of doing this to attract investors since there are a bunch of potential investment properties available in my area.

Thank you in advance!

Say, a CRS class I took said to have the SELLERS help you out by printing out business cards for their listing, they get to pass them out to all the people they know and your number goes on the card as a contact, so perhaps you'll pick up a client that way as well...

Do you have a database of clients you can e-mail a just listed flyer to? What about a database of agents you can do the same for?

On craigslist, my secret is to have TWO ads for the same listing that are different enough that I can alternate and repost them to keep them at the top of the list, and to delete Open House posts as soon as it's over.

Also, I have a few fresh baked cookies or brownies going the whole time - doesn't help them stop the car, but does help them stay and chat and makes the kitchen smell homey...

:-) Andrea

Norman - Once you sign up your account with ad words, it will walk you through it.  Basically, you start a campaign, write the headline and description.  Then it gives you the option to have the ad run by country, region or city.  If you pick city, you then get to type in the cities you want the ad run in.  you also get to choose if you want the ad to run only with the specific keywords you have chosen are typed in a search or in content (web pages who receive pay from Google for running ads that have similar content to you ad - i.e., Norm's Real Estate might just show up in a search for your city's chamber of commerce or for a moving company in your area.

Purchase two or three URL's for the property identifying the property address only.  Have the URL.com on your sign as big as you can get it!  Your phone number and website should be below and I put my affiliation at the top on the custom made sign.  (This runs me $60.00 for a two sided metal sign - full color)

Put the URL.info you your flyers and the URL.net to forward to your website listing page.

From this you'll see where the traffic is coming from.

I use single property sites for my listings and tour factory for the virtual tour.  I then pay $24.95 to have the tour connected to Realtor.com.  I understand that P2 has a free tour however, with tourfactory I can see what the consumer is looking at (picture, how long, etc.)  If they don't stay too long on one picture then I know there is something wrong with or one particular part of the home isn't interesting enough to the consumer and I change the photo.

I create a full color brochure with information from hometurfonline.com and put that in a brochure box.  I do not put the mls number on the brochure nor the price.  The purpose of this, for me, is to shove them to my website. to get to know me better.

I put the listing on postlets. com as well.  

With Craigs List, depending upon how many listings you have, put a posting on Friday night, Monday, Wednesday to keep that listing at the high position level.

Definitely AdWord.  

Stage the home if it doesn't show in the best light.  Also, curb appeal is what draws them in.  

When you hold the open house, I post the open house info on my listing comments as well as the standard open house directory.

Blog it on P2 - but no later than Monday or Tuesday for a good post.

P.S.  You'd go crazy with 100 people a day with the house.  It only takes one to purchase the home.  If you have done this and posted on P2 that you are having an open house then re-evaluate the house.

Nyassa,

I understand your pain.  I have the same situation on one of my listings.  It's just the market, and like someone else mentioned I just think it's a time factor.  I have done most of the things suggested with no success.  Don't beat yourself up.