Free advertising. Write for your local paper.

Here is an article from the Courier Post, a South Jersey newspaper.  I can post it because I wrote it.  If the courier hadn't printed it I was thinking of sending to a newswire but that is a bit expensive.  When the Courier printed it they did remove the last 3 sentences and took the word "Home" out of the headline, the rest they printed exactly as I wrote it.  It IS possible to get free advertising.  I think writing in the 3rd person was key.

Home Buyers Give the Cold Shoulder to Cold Homes.

You have vacated your home and still have a mortgage so you want to cut costs.  Is turning off the heat the way to go?  “Not unless you want to cut your sales price too”, says Paul Howard, Owner/Broker of NJHomeBuyer.com Realty in Cherry Hill.  Howard’s office only works for buyers and so is always focused on their likes and needs.  Buyers don’t like the cold.  “There is nothing colder than a vacant house without heat in the winter”, Howard says. “You have to go outside to get warm.  Buyers don’t stay long.”  Not only that, but if the heat is off the water better be off too, or there may be bigger problems with broken pipes. “Buyers want to know stuff works. When it is turned off they are not so sure,” Howard remarks.

In today’s real estate market many sellers are in a bind. They have already moved and their homes are vacant. To cut costs, they turn off the heat. A better choice may be to get a programmable thermostat and set it to 50 or lower at night and in the 70s during the times an agent may bring a buyer through.  Absent that, Howard suggests to buyers that they may save some cold hard cash by making lower offers on cold homes. <!--[endif]-->