What makes good real estate property listings?

In this article a “listing” will refer to a real estate ad on a real estate website like realestate.com.au or Domain. Real estate property listings that sell fast and above the asking price seem to have a few things in common:

1. Images – real estate agents need quality pictures
2. Premium positions – ads in prominent positions are obviously more likely to catch the eye
3. Description – the profile (text component) of the listing is clear, concise and written in such a way that sells the home.

Generally real estate agents hire professional photographers, so the images are under control. Here’s an example of how great photos can make a simple space look spacious and elegant.

Likewise, agents are generally aware of how to position ads to secure great positions.

That leaves us with the property description: the part of the ad that can let agents down.  This image shows a perfect example of how the sale of a home can be negatively impacted by having a poor property description listing.

How much impact can a property description have on the sale of a home?

• Beautiful homes with poorly written profiles might not achieve their full sales value.
• Property descriptions that focus on features and not benefits might not do the first part of the sales job.
• Average profiles might not attract as many potential buyers as good profiles (reducing buyer competition).

4 Key components of good Real Estate Property Listings

1. Clear headline
2. Normal, human English
3. Combination of long form text and bullet points
4. Focus on benefits, not just features

Clear headline

Too often real estate agents use headlines that are just plain wrong. Here are some ways that headlines can be improved:

• They try to tell the entire story of the property (make them shorter)
• The don’t make sense (don’t be obscure)
• They are badly formatted (don’t yell, don’t use excessive !!!)

Normal, human English

For some reason, the people who write the real estate property listings seem to think they need to write very long and complex words.  We call this tendency “right clickitis” because we’re pretty sure agents write a word, right click on it and choose a synonym.  Is it to sound smarter?  Is it to make the property seem more exotic? Real people want to read normal English. Deliver what your potential customer wants.

Combination of long form text and bullet points

Different people read different ways.  Some people skim text (bullet points appeal to these people) and some people like to get down in the weeds, so long form text appeals to them. Remember though, the aim of a real estate property listing is to get potential buyers to call, so don’t give away too much information.  Just get them to contact you.

Focus on benefits, not just features

Sure, sometimes listing features is necessary (like in bullet points).  Generally though, every single sales trainer and expert copywriter will tell you that when you’re selling something, you need to concentrate on pushing the benefits and not the features.  Remember this when writing your long form text.