It’s small wonder that with this spring’s selling season underway, Highlands’s house hunters can afford to be a discriminating bunch—they have the luxury of picking and choosing from a crop of truly inviting offerings. And it doesn’t hurt that today’s low mortgage interest rates have enabled more Highlands properties to fit within more family budgets.

For those of us who get to translate those home offerings into words for the Highlands listings, the job is to find phrases that draw attention to each given property’s uniquely attractive features.

But there’s another dimension that complicates things. English is a rich and powerful language, but when it comes to marketing lingo, it’s also true that these days everyone is being deluged 24/7 by vivid advertising claims. We’ve all developed callouses when it comes to the ballyhooing we get from every quarter.

Today’s house hunters have developed sales resistance. Times 10!

So what’s the answer for cooking up language that helps a property jump out from among the others? One way is to find out Highlands’s Top 10 listing phrases—and avoid overusing them! Same ‘ol, same ‘ol isn’t what works when the object is to attract Highlands prospects. True, some truly accurate descriptors can’t be totally avoided—but emphasizing them isn’t likely to fire many house hunters’ imaginations, either.

Here are a group of most frequently appearing Top 10 listing words and phrases—with some alternatives more likely to spark more attention from Highlands house hunters:

1. Beautiful (‘gorgeous’ ‘spectacular’ or ‘captivating’ bring more energy)
2. Hardwood floors (what kind of wood—and what hue?)
3. Stainless steel (at the very least, add ‘gleaming’ or ‘lustrous’)
4. Updated (‘renovated’ ‘remodeled’ ‘renewed’…or maybe even ‘reimagined’)
5. Private (this one is actually okay as-is…it may be a cliché, but it’s a desirable one!)
6. Spacious (puh-lese! How about ‘cavernous’ ‘commodious’ or ‘enormous’?)
7. Landscaped (another okay one, but in need of a boost—like ‘lusciously’ ‘stunningly’ or ‘exquisitely’)
8. Custom (‘tailor made’ ‘individualized’ ‘unique’ ‘personalized’ or ‘specially crafted’)
9. Clean (this is close to Top 10 listing phrase malpractice: if it’s clean, it’s surely also ‘spotless’ ‘flawless’ or ‘immaculate’)
10. Brand new (could be ‘state of the art’ ‘untouched’ ‘mint’ or ‘just completed’)

Even after a bit of polishing, those Top 10 listing phrases and words need to have a credibility boost via listing photography that illustrates what’s being promised. Putting the whole package together is just one part of the service you can count on when you give me a call!

It’s probably inevitable (and may have something to do with the way our brains are wired) that when most people start looking for a home in the area, they’re automatically drawn to the new Highlands listings first. Let’s face it: all things being equal, who wouldn’t choose a new car over a used one? That’s not to say experience hasn’t taught us that ‘new’ isn’t always the best choice. Last year, NBC’s ‘new’ live version of “The Sound of Music” is one example where the new model couldn’t hold a candle to the original (even if we had seen that one a half dozen times).

Yet the impulse to look for the latest, freshest product is as automatic as going to the fresh vegetables instead of the ‘day old’ bin at the supermarket. When you’re in the hunt for a Highlands home it’s just as likely that you will opt to check out the new Highlands listings before those that have been on the market for weeks or months.

Now, there is really no reason why that isn’t a perfectly reasonable way to proceed. There is always the possibility, for instance, that a new Highlands listing has just come on the market, that it’s the most fantastically great property out there, and that by jumping on it immediately, you will steal a march on the other listing watchers—get the first showing, make the first offer, and wind up in the house of your dreams (it happens!).

If you have an energetic Highlands agent (hint: like yours truly), you may be contacted as soon as a new listing in Highlands appears that meets your requirements. Or you may have set up an internet contact alert to produce a similar heads-up automatically. These are all good ideas, as any worm-gorged early bird will agree.

But the point is, the brand new listings are not the only game in town. Even if you have already combed through the Highlands listings so often that some of them have details you can recite from memory (oh, that’s the one with the “charming entry hall cathedral ceiling”), it’s worthwhile to occasionally revisit all the listings that fit your basic criteria. Among other reasons, Highlands listings that have been on the market for a while can undergo asking price reductions. Some which you haven’t paid attention to in the past can suddenly appear when they drop into your search price range. Others which had been listed as under contract may reappear when a buyer was unable to close the deal…In short, although it’s perfectly valid to review the real estate listings with the new Highlands listings at the head of the pack, thinking of them as intrinsically superior isn’t necessarily the case. Listings aren’t lettuce. In fact, there should be a bumper sticker:

Listings don’t wilt.

An alert and energetic real estate agent is an immensely valuable partner to have when you are on the prowl for a house of your dreams. So…call me!

Anyone who creates listings can’t help but be drawn to critiques of real estate writing. There aren’t a whole lot of those to be drawn to, so when a respected national media titan like The Wall Street Journal comes up with an essay on real estate listing language, this is one Highlands listing writer who considers it a must-read.

The poetic analysis in question appeared just last week. From the outset, it presented itself as a less than flattering critique: “Real-Estate Pros Pen Purple Prose” was the headline—with an explanatory blurb to the effect that higher-priced real estate listing lingo tends to get a little bit flowery. Never mind that the Journal put a hyphen between ‘real’ and ‘estate’—this was clearly going to be an authoritative commentary!

Bottom line: astronomical listing prices get more poetic language. In some cases, extremely poetic:

“Majestically poised along the shimmering Gulf of Mexico” was the first example quoted, for an $11 million beach home listing. The critic didn’t bother pointing out that ‘poised’ indicates that there is at least a possibility that the beach home will eventually topple into the shimmering Gulf of Mexico. Instead, the point was that the example 222-word listing includes such lyrical descriptions as the ‘unique harmony’ of this ‘haven of serenity’ suitable for ‘undisturbed reflection’ (we are left to imagine how undisturbed the serenity will be once the place pitches into the Gulf).

Unlike most literary commentators, the Journal’s critic relied on science and mathematics to underscore the evaluation. The Gulf house listing, for instance, registers at the “12th-grade reading level based on the Flesch-Kincaid scale.” (Who ever heard of that?) Mathematically, an analysis of recent samples of 1,000 listings found that the language used differed greatly depending on the listing price. For homes priced below $750,000, there were 13 words in an average sentence. Above $10 million: 18 words per sentence. Average syllables per word? $750,000 and below: 1.55. High end? 1.7 syllables. Average characters per word? –well, you get the idea!

As someone who is more than peripherally involved (there’s a 5-syllable one right there!) in creating Highlands listing prose, I feel I really should point out that the number of words per sentence, characters per word, etc., really isn’t what makes an effective listing. It needs to be attention-getting, quick and easy to read (prospects don’t dawdle over listing language, most of them scan quickly), positive—and accurate! When a buyer is attracted enough to request a property showing, it better live up to the prose (purple or not).

In case you were wondering, this blog registers a solid 8.9 on the Flesch-Kincaid. But in case you are soon to need a level-headed real estate agent to create an appealing Highlands listing that describes your own home in a way that pulls in buyers, you can call anytime!

If 90% of home buyers use the internet at some point in their search, the percentage who go to the Highlands listings has to be close to the same ballpark. It’s hard to imagine anyone NOT wanting to take at least a peek at the current listings. Even if they have already settled on a target property, curiosity would send most of us to check out the way it’s described in its Highlands listing.

When you begin your house-hunting project online, the chances are you just scan the listings’ major features to narrow down the candidates, leaving out the majority of the finer details until later. Some of that information might turn out to be decisive—but most likely not until you’ve settled on the major contenders, and possible already toured them in person.

What can be more important than you’d think might be the descriptive language that describes the overall property: the ‘blurb’ that’s up there at the top of Highlands listings. Just as a good salesman in any field strives to present the most attractive facets of their product, a Highlands listing’s descriptive paragraph can be as important as the glamour photo that accompanies it.

In pursuit of facts that might support that idea, Zillow’s writer Catherine Sherman took a look at some research that dissected the language used in some 24,000 listings. They all resulted in sales—but some brought higher sale prices than did others. Her summary of the findings is pretty interesting:

Luxurious, Captivating, Impeccable (and Spotless) were among the adjectives that appeared most often in listings that resulted in above-average sale prices. That stands to reason: adjectives pointing to higher-end features would be apt to set a superior tone.

Less obviously, some of the nouns that accompanied larger price tags were Basketball, Pergola, and Granite. “Granite” will surprise no one who has been exposed to home design over the past 20 or 20 years—granite counters are the default go-to material that’s come to symbolize quality in kitchen décor. And pergolas are landscaping plusses…

But…“Basketball”?

Apparently for lower-priced homes with listings that mention ‘basketball,’ selling prices are 4.5% more than expected. You have to suspect that the word gives some color to a run-of-the mill listing—yet I’d be surprised if just setting up a hoop over the garage door made much of an impact. When Author Sherman writes “Among lower-priced homes…an indoor basketball court is a huge selling point,” I have to think, “DUH!” How many Highlands listings for lower-priced homes have indoor basketball courts (or bowling alleys or soccer stadiums, either)?

More practically, Upgraded and Updated were listing words that coincided with slightly higher sale numbers—at least in mid-priced homes. And Gentle was a surprising winner, too, as in “gentle rolling hills.”

I think ‘gentle’ highlights the most important take-away that I believe is relevant and true. Thoughtfully composed, accurate descriptions are what give Highlands listings a working advantage over cookie-cutter summaries—especially those weighed down by cliché-studded vocabularies. I work hard to insure that my clients’ online presence stands out from the crowd. If you plan to be listing a Highlands property soon, I hope you will give me a call to demonstrate what I mean!