Why and How to Carefully Avoid Needless, Unnecessary Descriptive Words in a Listing

When enthusiastically penning your witty, pithy discourse on the manifold value and charms of your sterling real estate listing, you may want to give some concentrated thought to the number of iridescent adjectives with which you hope to capture the keen and penetrating interest of your hopeful homebuyers. While the expressions of your verbiage are no doubt impressive, they may not grace your scintillating copy with the inspiring passion that you hope to incite in the hearts of their viewers.

Did that make you tired, reading it? Listings that have an adjective for every noun are tiring for your home seekers too. The last thing that your prospective buyers want is to have to wade through a thicket of adjectives and adverbs to get to the information that they are looking for in your listing. You may think that the more descriptive terms, the more enthusiastic someone will be about the listing, but that is not so. People don’t want to be told at every turn what to think about a feature. 

The adjectives and common phrases that agents use when composing a listing have become clichés. There are presently several humorous "real estate lexicons" circulating the Internet, which illustrate what people think of a number of overused terms and the prevalence of descriptive words in listings.

Many such descriptions are held to be a veil for less than desirable aspects of the property being listed. In fact, the more picturesque your language is, the more suspicious the listing sounds. You don’t want to sound like you’re trying too hard; it makes people think that there’s something wrong!

If people have to wade through a thicket of adjectives to get to the actual information, they may lose patience and move on to another listing, or another agent. People searching the Internet are capricious beings and their power to move on with a click of their mouse button should not be taken lightly.

There is also the issue of reading comprehension. You want to make your copy accessible to everyone. While someone may have trouble understanding a barrage of pleonasm, it doesn’t mean that their money isn’t good. A reading level that people are comfortable with is much better than a reading level that only a few people can understand comfortably without frequent visits to the dictionary.

How do you make good copy? By giving people the information they need to determine if the house suits what they are looking for. You don’t have to hit them over the head with the various defects of the home – unless you are trying to market it as a fixer-upper – but don’t go overboard trying to sell them on the home. Let the home speak for itself.