All this week, I will be publishing my five key takeaways from the new book Zillow Talk: The New Rules of Real Estate by Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff and Chief Economist Stan Humphries.  You can read my review of the book at Inman News here, and the rest of the “five takeaways” here. 

If you’ve been following this blog, you know that my professional mission is to raise the level of client service that real estate agents give to their clients.  In many cases, being better at your job requires a lot of work – for example, building up your referral base by providing non-transactional services like yearly CMAs for your past clients will take some time every year.  In other cases, improving your client service might cost money, like the cost of hiring professional videographers for all your listings.  And, finally, in other cases, it might require agents to develop new skills, like learning how to turn a listing presentation into a more effective consultation, and studying negotiating, staging, or how to take professional photos.

In some cases, though, being better at your job doesn’t actually require a lot of work, or money, or study – it just means putting in a little bit more effort to do the things you’re already doing, but doing them just a little bit better. It means returning phone calls more quickly, or using your marketing to educate and inform rather than simply promote.

And in some cases, it’s really, really easy – like writing better property descriptions.

Real estate agents drive me nuts with their horribly written, misspelled, incomplete, ungrammatical, boring property descriptions.  Some of them still think they’re writing classified ads in the newspaper, so they abbreviate everything  beyond recognition: “Bung w Clap, GMT EIK w Brkf, C-fan, D/W” (for a translation of all that mess, go here). Others don’t know how to spell, or use a word processor that could their spelling for them.  And others just can’t write, so they string together non-descriptive, lifeless sentences that do nothing to help sell their listing.

But what makes me absolutely crazy are the agents who just don’t try.  I can forgive the other stuff, but I can’t forgive someone who wants to get paid thousands of dollars to sell a listing, but can’t be bothered to spend an hour writing out a decent description.  How many listings in your market right now have like a three-line property profile – for a 4,500 square foot house with 5 bedrooms and a pool and all the other stuff?

I’ve been preaching this gospel for years, arguing that agents absolutely have to take the time to write out a good property description, that the description is really their opportunity to speak directly to a buyer and sell that home.  And I’ve been reminding agents that they’re not under onerous space restrictions like the ones they used to have in classified ads, or even in the early days of online listings.  They have enough space to write something great, or at least good.

Now, I have some data to back it up.  In Rascoff and Humphries’ Zillow Talk: The New Rules of Real Estate, the authors devote a whole chapter (Chapter 11) to “how to Write an Effective Listing.”  Much of the chapter is devoted to some interesting correlations they found in the data between certain words used in descriptions and home values or characteristics, such as:

• The word “unique” is usually associated with homes that sell for 30%-50% less than their local average, because “unique” homes seem to often need some kind of rehabilitation. (Page 108).
• The word “modern” usually indicates the home was built in the 1950s or 1960s. (Page 109).
• Properties with the words “charming,” “quaint,” or “cute” are usually substantially smaller than the median-sized home.

On the plus side, they provide a list of words that seem to be associated with higher values, either because they describe features that tend to raise home prices or maybe because there is something “magic” in certain types of descriptors and how they titillate the reader’s interest: “impeccable,” “gentle,” “remodeled,” “captivating,”

But that’s the the best part of the chapter. No, the best part is this:

If you’re worrying about boring potential buyers, don’t.  We’ve found that longer listings consistently sell for more.  Buyers want to know details, and those extra words can give them additional information about whether a house is worth the trek to see it in person.  And, in doing so, they can often increase a home’s final sale price.

(Page 115, with emphasis in original).

Think about that – longer property descriptions tend to be associated with homes that sell for more than their expected value. And that’s not just because homes that are bigger (and thus more expensive) often demand longer descriptions.  Rascoff and Humphries controlled for that by looking at homes in different tiers of value, and they provided an illustrative graph that shows that regardless of whether the home is in the lower-, middle-, or top-tier of prices in an area, homes that sold for more than their expected value consistently had longer listing descriptions.

They do caution that they see an upper limit of about 250 words, after which you get diminishing returns for longer descriptions.  But 250 words is a lot more than what most agents write in their listing descriptions.  To give you an idea, the first four paragraphs of this blog post, beginning with “If you’ve been following” and ending with “help sell their listing,” is about 280 words.  That’s a lot of space!

Rascoff and Humphries have other good advice as well, cautioning sellers (and listing agents) to avoid vague euphemisms, stress specific features, and describe the full home.  I’ve been saying this for years, as have most real estate trainers, but finally we have some data to back it all up.

So take the time to write some decent descriptions of your listings. Not only is it a good service to your clients, and helpful in impressive future clients, but it will make you and your seller more money.

Zillow Talk: The New Rules of Real Estate – Takeaway #1

Zillow Talk: The New Rules of Real Estate – Takeaway #2