Vicki Holmes is selling a sprawling, elegant ranch house in the heart of Colonia Solana, one of Tucson's most established neighborhoods.

Just a stone's throw from Hi Corbett Field and Reid Park, the home is in a prime spot with plenty of visibility. But to help get the word out, Holmes recently turned to the Internet, uploading a 90-second video tour of the $600,000 listing to the popular Youtube Web site. There, viewers can peer into the ranch house, taking in its hardwood floors, wood-beam ceilings and gourmet kitchen.

"Nowadays, with today's market, we have to be more creative, and you just have to continue to market, market, market," said Holmes, an agent with Long Realty.

In an attempt to spark interest and reach a wider audience, agents are marketing homes on Youtube and other popular Web sites not traditionally tied to real estate. These free videos and listings, agents say, only help to get the word out about a property or a neighborhood, particularly for people out of state.

But whether these videos or other Internet goodies actually lead to sales is debatable. Some say sites like Youtube or the free-classified Craigslist are too unfocused to actually spark interest in properties.

The Colonia Solana video has had about 120 views in two months, which Holmes thought was pretty good. One home she has made a video for has sold, although she said it wasn't necessarily because of the Youtube spot.

There are dozens of home tours for the Tucson area up on YouTube, which shows the number of hits each video gets. Some have had close to 1,500 views, and others have hardly ever been seen. Most of the videos seem to be for higher-end homes, but the tours span all price ranges, even including some homes described as foreclosures.

Some videos come with voice-overs, and others play swanky, mood-setting music or even nature sounds like bird calls that can make the videos more comical than informative.

"I do the voice-over because I would rather that be more prominent," said Holmes, who self-produces her videos and has three online. "I thought (the music) is too overbearing because it's losing the impact of the home."

Larry Appel, an agent who is also with Long, has posted numerous videos to Youtube in the past year, but, unlike Holmes, he outsources the work. The videos have never led to a direct sale, he said, but they have led to interest in a particular community or neighborhood. There have been times, Appel said, prospective buyers have seen a video and ended up buying a neighboring home.

"They didn't help sell the multimillion-dollar homes specifically, but they created significant interest in communities or subdivisions," Appel said. "The concept is to show people the community in addition to the various properties for sale."

Appel, for example, has a video tour of a luxury home near Honeybee Canyon in Oro Valley that features sweeping shots of the desert and the surrounding community before more detailed shots of the home.

Appel only uses the videos for high-end homes because he said most buyers of luxury homes are coming to Tucson from out of state. Because he outsources the work, the production quality is high, but it also comes at a price.

"I've been doing that just with the upper-level homes because it's so costly to do," he said.

But if agents have turned to Youtube and other Web sites to market homes, why wouldn't homeowners just do the same and cut out a middleman?

Youtube offers a smattering of for-sale-by-owner videos. Many more videos and slideshows can be found on the Forsalebyowner.com Web site.

Greg Healy, vice president of operations for Forsalebyowner.com, said he expects an uptick in listings on the site in many markets as the number of "upside-down" homes and foreclosures increase. People are upside-down when they owe more on their mortgages than the property is worth.

The buying process is "taking place on the Internet and more prominently without agents, and I think that's the tipping point," he said. But he described what's happening on Youtube, or other non-traditional sites like Craigslist, as unfocused competition.

"Youtube and Craigslist are not focused real estate channels," he said. "It makes it difficult for anything to lead to a sale."

Maybe so, but the listings and videos keep coming. Facebook, the popular social networking site, for example, now has a "Cribfinder" page where homes are listed. Many agents say understanding new media is crucial to staying in the real estate business.

Vito Teti, an agent with Remax Majestic, now exclusively markets homes on the Internet, relying on traditional sites like Realtor.com as well as Youtube videos, Craigslist and his own sites.

"You have to stay on top of the Internet. It's not a fad," he said, adding that a growing number of people start their home search online. To that end, the work ethic to market and sell a home hasn't changed. Just the medium.

"You have to . . . take advantage of every single outlet that is out there," Teti said. "It's very time-consuming, but that's what I get paid to do."