Managing Removed Content

[Buckey]

I am a Real Estate Developer.  Once a home goes off market (is sold),  I had been using a 404 for that page.

The problem:   When the home goes up on market again,  google will not re-index the new page (same URL)

I have also tried to manage it a different way.  Instead of removing the page, I left it as-is.  At some later point time, the house goes back up on the market.  The page is refreshed with new content.  However, google decides to use cached version.

Please note in either case,  the property appears on the main page for a period of indexing.

I have been doing this for 10 years, the problem is increasing with time.

[Buckey]

That is exactly what option #2 is as described above.  The page does not get re-indexed when the new content is available (at least in the time that I need it to be)

[mcncl]

Would it not be easier to have something on the individual page to say that the house was sold (and not 404), "but here are some similar properties in your price range/preferences"? This would allow Google to crawl through to these suggested pages and help them get indexed.