Content writing for real estate is all about understanding your audience and what they want. Everyone who lands on a real estate website is there because they’re interested in buying or selling - or they may be inquiring for the future.
When you look at it that way, you realize that every visitor to your site is a potential sales opportunity.
When writing blog posts and listings they should accomplish a few things:
1. Make the seller happy
2. Increase your digital footprint in the marketplace
3. Provide value to the reader
4. Generate more traffic to your website
5. Help solidify your online reputation
Continue reading below for more.
6 Tips for Mastering Real Estate Content
Coming up with great real estate content for your listings and blogs is a constant challenge that agents face. Potential buyers seek a lot more than an agent who simply wants to sell them a house, they’re looking for value, and a person who stands out in a sea of competition.
There are so many things you can do to make your content pop. Whether you’re trying to learn how to start a real estate blog or you simply want to write better listings, these six tips will help you.
1. Perfect Your Titles
It all starts with the title right? It’s one of the first things a potential buyer or seller will see so it needs to be perfect. If you’re not writing great titles, you’re likely missing out on a lot of opportunities.
Your title needs to do a few things:
It should use eye-grabbing adjectives like “charming, huge, multi-family, historic, etc.”
It should describe the property using keywords like “three bedroom, finished basement, two-car garage.”
It should be straightforward about the location with the town, borough, city, municipality, etc.
It should use all applicable characters. If you’re allowed 50 characters on a listing, use them all!
In addition to these four things, your listing needs to also grab and hold attention long enough to get people to click through and check it out.
2. Thoroughly Describe the Home
Nothing is worse than a listing that leaves you wanting more. You’re left with so much room to describe a property and yet so few agents actually take the time to explain to people what they’re looking at.
According to the National Association of Realtors, 93% of people look online when searching for a home. This means that almost every single person looking is going to go online before they ever pick up a phone to call you.
Because of this, you need to write a great description that makes people feel compelled to reach out. Include information like:
Home Info (Single Family, Condo, Villa, Rental, Multi Family)
Bed/Bath Count
Garage Size
Finished Basement?
Yard size
Yard features
Entertaining space?
Special Home Features (hardwoods, pool, outdoor kitchen, gourmet kitchen, dock, stainless, dual masters, mother in law, mountain view, waterfront)
In addition to simply including this information, you need to think about the phrases that people search for on Google and how you can align your listing with those phrases.
For example, the keyword “3 bedroom house for sale in Philadelphia” may have a lot more searches than “three br home in Philly for sale.” You need to appeal to what potential buyers are searching for.
3. Highlight the Neighborhood
Real estate is all about location and you can’t simply assume that everyone looking at your listings understands the neighborhood. As agents, we like to assume that everyone shopping for homes is already familiar with the area.
You can solidify yourself as a neighborhood expert by highlighting:
Homes available in the area
Average bed/bath count for homes in that area
Average garage size
Year subdivision built
Styles of homes
HOA (Homeowners Association)
Pets allowed
School district (high school, middle school, elementary school)
Special neighborhood features (pool, tennis courts, community dock, fitness center)
Special community features (city park, rec center, shopping mall, walk to restaurants)
All of this information will help buyers understand more about the neighborhood and whether or not it’ll be an ideal location for them. Content writing for real estate is all about appealing to emotions.
4. Use the Best Photos
Photos, photos, photos, and more photos. You can never have enough pictures of a listing and be sure that they’re all high-quality.
They’re so important that statistics show 95% of users view the first photo for as long as 20 seconds before looking at anything else. If the main picture you’re using for your listing doesn’t immediately grab their attention, they’re moving on.
Make sure you’re including photos of everything too. If the house has three bathrooms, it better have a picture of each bathroom otherwise buyers will question the presence and condition of that third bedroom.
Keep in mind that younger generations are the main buyers right now and they would prefer not to pick up the phone unless they’re entirely sure they’re interested in the house they want to see.
5. Target Specific Buyer Personas
Another important factor in content writing for real estate is understanding your audience. Take a look at the house you’re selling, what kinds of features does it have?
Do these features appeal to a family with a lot of children or are they more desirable for a single couple who likes to entertain? Maybe the house has a beautiful but dangerous pool and patio area with a bar. Does that sound like the best environment for a bunch of toddlers and young kids?
Probably not.
Try and get into the mindset of who would be interested in the house when you’re writing the real estate listing. Use words that appeal to that audience. You should have a direct buyer persona in mind when you’re putting the listing together.
6. Talk About the City
Expanding out beyond the neighborhood is another great way to generate attention from people who are looking outside the area. If someone in another state is considering moving to your local area, you’ll need to provide information about the things that make your neighborhood desirable.
Include information like:
Population
Median age
Urban, suburban, rural
Major Employers
Sports, culture, activities (arts centers, major or minor league sports teams, hiking, skiing, watersports, landmarks)
Citydata.com is a great resource for this information. Ubersuggest is also an exceptional free keyword research tool that can help you target keywords that people are searching on a larger scale. Some examples include:
Houses for sale in Scranton, PA
Homes in Williamsport Pennsylvania
…and so on
You want to try and include these phrases on your website and in your listings wherever possible because people outside your local area may look them up on Google before diving into a site like Zillow and Realtor.com.
Wrapping Up
If you want to start a real estate blog or simply improve your real estate listings, these are some important steps to take. Be sure that your content is always original, not copied from anywhere, and is unique and interesting enough to generate the right attention.
Sometimes it’s more about simply putting in the work and doing the steps you know will make a difference in your business.
To learn more about how Christian Saunders Real Estate supports our agents and helps them with their real estate marketing, click here to schedule an interview!