The Eagle's View

A recent article that appeared in The Denver Post discussed words used in a listing description that can help or hurt the success of a listing.

Now what the article stated came as old news to many of us in the real estate profession and to many people who have read the book, "Freakonomics". But nonetheless, it comes down to this summary:

People are more interested in reading in a listing description things that make the home sound pretty than things that make it sound undesireable. Wow! Really!!!

The study cited in the article discovered that homes advertised with terms like, motivated seller, good value, as-is, and new paint, tend to sell for lower prices and take longer to sell. In contrast, homes that are described with terms like landscaped, curb appeal, granite, maple, gourmet, and golf, tend to sell quicker and for more money.

My question about this study is...aren't they making illogical coorelations? I mean, if a home has granite coutertops, awesome views, great curb appeal, maple cabinets, etc. well people like that stuff and are going to buy that home quicker and pay more for it. Not all homes have such ammenities and cannot be advertised with such posh sounding words, but there is a market for those homes too, they just might not sell as fast.

Really the only thing that can be taken from this article is that as a real estate agent and/or a home seller, it's important to stage the home as best as you can, price it right, and market it throughly. Don't get too caught up in things like the description. Using lots of exclamation marks in the description won't cause it to take longer to sell in my opinion, but doing that will detract attention from the things you really want to exclam about, which is the point of a description in the first place!!!