What does your out of the area cell phone number say about you? Let’s start with where are you located? I see your phone number is out of the area, how long have you lived locally? Not being local (I have lived in 352-area code going on 13 years), how well do you know the area, the market, the prices and demands on local inventory? All of these points can be going through a buyers or sellers mind when they see your number. In some cases, they may skip over you because of your phone number.
We have several solutions for you to decide what is the best remedy to give you a local number. The first I am not a fan of doing, but you can go to the store and buy a “burner phone.” Yes, the vision of drug dealers, spies and other characters using a phone and trashing it after using the phone comes to mind. You can buy a prepaid phone and keep it stocked for minutes to have that needed local number, but now you are carrying two phones; very inconvenient.
Next choice is Google Voice. I loaded Google Voice on my laptop and phone and signed up for a local number. I now have a 352-area code number available. It works great for incoming calls, and I think I figured out the outgoing so it displays my 352 number. I would recommend playing with it for a while before publishing your new number. In what I read, many times you the user will forget about the second line and end up calling them from your regular number. That might not be a bad idea once they talk to you if you are like me and use your main cellphone number as your business number. Did I mention it’s FREE? Yes Google Voice is free for now, but you never know when they might decide to charge a few bucks. Not sure if you can port that number to another service, so you might want to investigate before publishing. I was lucky my new number is 352 (Central Florida area code) 717 (my PA area code) 4128 – if you call that number more than likely I won’t answer as I have notifications turned off.
There are apps available you can pay for service which offer many more bells and whistles than Google Voice. If you are interested check them out: Sideline, Flyp and Cloud Sim. You might want to check your carrier also as they might have a solution for a second line which could be your local number where you live today.
