With a flood of new luxury listings coming online every day, it can be difficult to make yours stand out. Most luxury real estate agents realize that high-quality photography and video marketing are vital pieces of successfully marketing a listing, but what about listing copy? Adapting to real estate trends in the luxury market includes knowing how to adapt your listing copy to what prospects want, and the most successful agents in our network are the ones who are able to tell a story in their listings.

Here are three ways you can improve your listing copy for more effective marketing:

1. Lead with lifestyle

We already know from consistent real estate market trends that luxury real estate is about lifestyle, but too often, listings still read like a laundry list of features and don’t communicate the lifestyle a property can afford a new potential owner. 

While it’s hard to fit everything you want to say into 800 characters, it’s best to lead with telling a prospect about the kind of lifestyle they can expect from a property. Working in what you know about real estate market trends right away, such as the luxury market’s affinity for walkable cities and healthy living, are going to hook a prospect more effectively than simply telling them that the cupboards are brand new.

Since the first few sentences of any listing need to hook a prospect’s interest, leading with what they care about most is key to enticing them enough to want to see the property in person.

2. Focus on the big picture

Just like you wouldn’t show someone every minute detail during a showing, your listing copy should largely focus on the most important features, as well. Your listing should have high-quality photography that clearly depicts most of the property’s features. 

Instead of reiterating everything that the prospect can see in the photos, use your 800 characters to complement the photos instead. That means talking about features you can’t see, such a Hepa Air Filter, or the property’s noise level if a possible objective is that it’s located close to a busy street or highway, or how close it is to country clubs and shopping. 

3. Stay away from too many mentions of “customization”

Real estate market trends have shown that prospective buyers in any market respond better to neutral staging because it’s easier for them to picture themselves in the home. This same idea applies to describing your listing as well.

Mentioning customizations isn’t always necessarily a bad thing, but it shouldn’t be the entire focus of the listing. Prospects, especially in the luxury market, don’t necessarily want to live in someone else’s dream home—they want to live in something that feels like their own.

If you do market a listing with a number of custom features, better to focus more on how those features will enhance the lifestyle that property has to offer rather than simply throwing around the word “custom” as a selling feature. 

If you want to know more about how to wow sellers and grow your luxury real estate business in 2020 and beyond, click here to find out more about our in-person and online luxury real estate marketing trainings!