Marketing Your Home
To Overseas Buyers

Question: I have been selling real estate in Long Beach for 27 years. One of my clients, who has a loft in an old department store building, asked me to find out how to reach the foreign investors who want to scoop up real estate in the U.S. She would love for me to do an e-mail blast. Would that work?

 -- Debi Garcia-Benson, Long Beach

Debi: I don't know of any comprehensive list of foreign investors salivating to buy American properties. But even if I did, I'd be wary of using it for one big reason: E-blasts are spam.

Fortunately, there are other strategies that are, in my opinion, far more effective and less obnoxious in reaching buyers both here and abroad, and less likely to get you banished permanently to the junk senders list. Most of them involve creating an advertising strategy where you won't be lost in a thicket of competitors. And they can be used both by real-estate agents and do-it-yourself home sellers:

• Create your own Web site. It's fine to post your listing on a for-sale-by-owner site like Owners.com or ForSaleByOwner.com if you're a seller, and if you are an agent, on your brokerage's Web site. You can be sure that foreign buyers will be looking there, too. But you will always have competition from other listings there. So in addition, it's a good idea to create your own Web site where you can expand the number of pictures and go into more detail about the home's attractions. One free option for putting together your own site, still in the testing phase, is Google's Page Creator. But there are many other choices available that don't require any experience in coding or html, including FreeWebs.com, Webpage-maker.com, Web.com and BlueVoda.com.

• Look to your hometown newspaper. As more people flock to the Web to look for homes, it seems counterintuitive to take out a print advertisement. But as the number of classified ads shrink -- the Newspaper Association of American recently estimated that print ads declined 15.7% in 2007 and will fall 7.3% in 2008 -- your ad is less likely to be overlooked than in the days when classified advertising overwhelmed most newspapers. Also, it will reach older buyers who may not be tech-savvy, as well as visitors from other countries who still like to dream about owning an American getaway while sipping their morning coffee.

• Advertise in foreign newspapers. While rich American home sellers sometimes buy display ads in foreign newspapers, there aren't many examples of more mainstream U.S. homes in the classified sections. So if your neighborhood has lots of seasonal visitors from certain countries, take out classified ads in their newspapers. Just remember to include the price translated into the local currency, as well as your Web site's address (and don't just stick to the big city newspapers -- consider some smaller regional ones, too). If you want to reach entire regions, you may want to buy a package of ads through a broker such as International Newspaper Networks. You can reach millions of readers this way, though it may cost you close to $1,000.

• Consider non-real-estate-related glossies. There's nothing wrong with taking out a big ad in one of the many luxury real-estate magazines that have worldwide circulation. But if you want your ad to stand out, place it in a foreign magazine that isn't about real estate but has a logical connection to your property's greatest asset. For instance, if your home has a boat dock and your community has numerous visitors from England during the high season, find an English boating magazine. Travel, golfing, fishing, skiing and other magazines are also good possibilities -- as are cooking magazines if your home has a big kitchen, decorating magazine if you are including fancy furniture in the sale, and even auto-enthusiast magazines if your home has room for multiple cars.

Regardless of the venue you take, keep in mind that you are trying to make your place seem like it's one-of-a-kind, even if it's one of many look-alike condos in a high-rise. So think what your residence's best feature is and emphasize that. You'll have the best chance for success if you cast your net as wide as you can, but keep your message sharp and focused.

Do you have a story to share -- good or bad -- about buying or selling a home abroad? Please share it with June Fletcher for possible inclusion in a future column or feature. Write to her at june.fletcher@wsj.com

-- June Fletcher is a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal and the author of "House Poor" (Harper Collins, 2005). Email your questions about the residential real-estate market. Please include your name, city and state. If you don't want your name used in our column, please indicate that. Due to volume of mail received, we regret that we cannot answer every question.

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