The simplest oversights could be ruining your listings—and standing in the way of landing your next sale! How many of these 7 real estate copywriting mistakes are you making?
Have you noticed the following?
Rather than click through to read your real estate ad, people are bypassing your listings.
Instead of inspiring readers to take action (and contact you), they choose to leave the page.
What’s going on?
Sometimes, it’s the little details – small copywriting mistakes – that end up pushing potential buyers away and costing you big time.
In this post, we’ll list common real estate copywriting mistakes, so you don’t make them!
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Real estate copywriting mistakes that ruin the quality of your listings
Using real estate jargon
As a real estate agent or broker, certain terms and language have become habit.
You use them all the time at the office and with colleagues, so you don’t even notice that your property descriptions include words or phrases that the average home buyer might never have heard of before—especially if this is their first time making buying or renting.
You know what “DOA” and “HOA” mean but what about your readers? Do they know what you’re talking about?
Using real estate jargon is one of the most overlooked mistakes and it can seriously ruin the success of your listing.
It’s really simple: if the prospect doesn’t understand what he’s reading, he isn’t likely to inquire.
If you must use real estate language, spell abbreviations out or provide a brief explanation where possible. Otherwise, use layman’s terms.
Forgetting to review and edit your work
Believe it or not, this is another incredibly common real estate copywriting mistake.
Real estate agents are so short on time that they’re often forced to throw together a property listing in between other tasks and then simply forget to read it over before publishing. Instead, the description goes straight online – mistakes and all!
Before you send out real estate ads or upload listings on real estate platforms, always check for accuracy, spelling, typographical and grammatical errors.
You’re shouting
So, this isn’t as common now as it was in the past but every now and then you’ll still come across an ALL CAPS property description.
Seriously, just don’t do it.
Capitalizing everything in your text is the equivalent of shouting. Beyond that, it also makes your listing tough on the eyes and therefore hard to read.
There’s a nifty little ‘change case’ button in Word that allows you to switch to sentence case—use it.
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Walls and walls of text
This might seem like an innocuous mistake but failing to use paragraphs and white space could you be costing you readers.
Like the all caps scenario, an endless block of text is visually unappealing. It makes reading more challenging and the information harder to decipher.
With shorter attention spans, very few people are going to put in the effort to read a super long paragraph when there are other reader-friendly listings just one click away.
Use short sentences, break paragraphs down into manageable chunks, and incorporate bullet points where possible to make your real estate description an easy read.
Going overboard with details
Sometimes, there are just so many awesome little details you want potential buyers to know about the property. So you add them into the description. Then little by little, your description gets really, really long … and overwhelming.
You don’t want to inundate readers with too many facts and figures that he’s not able to process what he just read. Instead, consider highlighting the most important points or special features about the property. Then offer to send a more detailed PDF for those that express a serious interest in the home.
Forgetting to give your listing some personality
Real estate descriptions that sell are those that grab attention and kindle the reader’s imagination.
Facts and figures are a must but it’s equally important to engage the prospect—he has to be able to visualize his life in that home.
For that, you need to subtly paint a picture that speaks to his hopes and dreams being realized there.
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Struggling to get prospects to take that valuable next step? A real estate description writer can help.
