When listing a home, pictures say 1,000 words, and you should certainly focus on producing quality, engaging, and visual content that attracts more eyes to your listings; however, 1,000 words can say a lot more about a home than maybe you’ve ever realized! When it comes to making listing descriptions, it’s easy to fall into using the same jargon or generally letting the listing speak for itself.
In today’s age, you don’t want to leave anything to chance and with more modern home searches starting online, it makes sense to make your listings as accurate and attractive as possible. Here are some of our mistakes to avoid.
Proofread and Avoid Grammatical and Spelling Mistakes
We understand that you’re busy, and sometimes it’s hard to take the time to draft up a perfect listing, but just because you have to speed through a listing doesn’t mean that you’re free and clear from making grammatical or spelling blunders within the listing itself.
At all costs, avoid making grammatical mistakes and proofread multiple times to eliminate anything that could potentially turn off a buyer from contacting you about a home. Spending a little extra time combing through your written content could yield big dividends. After all, if you don’t have the time to eliminate basic grammatical and spelling errors, how will you make the time to cross all of the T’s and dot all of the I’s when it comes time to closing?
Monitor Your Word Choice
Another easy trap we fall into with our listings is using too much jargon or generally using the wrong word choices. Inherently, you probably won’t (or maybe just can’t) write an out-and-out poor listing description, but perhaps you can use better word choices to make the home sound more desirable to potential buyers. After all, seeing is believing, but being able to describe what the buyer will experience is a different skill set.
That said, avoid using too much industry jargon. In all likelihood, your buyers have heard all of the jargon at this point, and they’re probably about tired of it–give it a rest for your listing description purposes. Also, use your words to really command the reader’s attention and describe the space as though they were physically in the home.
Avoid “Listing” Details
When we say to avoid listing details, we’re not referring to making a physical list–bulletized lists are great for listings to highlight the most desirable parts of a listing. What we’re referring to here is to avoid repeating the details that are already available on the MLS portion of the listing such as bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, lot size, and other essential parts of the listing. There’s no need to repeat those details.
Instead, highlight the most desirable details of the listing and further create a sense of desire for your potential buyer. One of the mistakes that are easy to make is to ignore some of the things that make a home unique or otherwise desirable, so make it a point moving forward to avoid that pitfall. The more you can highlight desirable traits of a home, the more powerful your listing description will be.
To make matters easier, potentially include contact information for lenders and other real estate professionals you trust. To start, get in touch with Tidewater Mortgage Services, Inc. and let our loan experts help you get the right information on your listings and on your website!
