Now where did I put that can of shark repellent...
Contrary to what some would have you believe even a novice can create and put up a good looking website, after all many of the problems with HTML and CSS are universal and as such have already been solved, documented etc. A quick search of Google turns up THOUSANDS of stunning templates, online tools for creating CSS menus and all the whistles and bells javascript you could ever want to cut and paste is out there. All completely free.
The downside of doing it your self of course is that it takes time for you to learn.
Market research is a useful process for tweaking a design, go look and see how others have done things.
Artwork and graphics might also be benificial, having [text] adsense links in the top text is also distracting to the eye making the actual content harder to read. Personally I would also get the adverts off the landing page alltogether but that's just me.
Also would consider shortening the H1 titles and links so that they fit on a single line, more punchy and slightly less specific. Remember the goal is to keep the visitor on your site looking for what they want. Break the content down into smaller chunks if need be, better still of course is loads more content.
Given the sums of money involved buying / selling property then folk are going to want to see facts and figures rather than vauge waffle, eg graphs, bank intrest rates all that heavy stuff from the Wall St Journal lol. This in turn should spawn related ads for loans and accountants which are more likely to get a click than some of what is turning up on site at present.