Doesn't the sound of 'Beautiful", "Charming", "Great Location", "Spacious", "Attractive", "Gorgeous", "Fantastic" and "Lovely" feel like nails being dragged down an old chalk board. I see these all of the time in rental ads and homes for sale ads. The fact is, most of these words or adjectives actually negatively affect the final sales or rental price of the home. Why?
According to Steven D. Levitt, the author of "Freakonomics", he suggests that homes that tend to not have many specific attributes worth describing, like those above, correlate to a lower sales price. "'Spacious' homes are often decrepit or impractical. 'Great neighborhood' signals a buyer that, well, this house isn't very nice but others nearby may be."
What are some of the words or adjectives that are used to help increase the value of ones home and decrease vacancy rates for rental properties? Here's the breakdown:
Granite
State-of-the-art
Stainless Steel Appliances
vaulted Ceilings
Maple
Gourmet
Corian
Wood Floors
Many of these adjectives are physical descriptions of the house: granite, Corian, vaulted ceilings, wood floors. These terms which are usually not associated with fixer uppers and are straightforward, tend to attract higher quality leads and a higher sales or rental price.
Believe it or not, the wording is the least powerful aspect of an ad and grabbing the potential client or tenants attention. The others are location of the ad (what sites are they showing up on) and quality pictures. Let's discuss location of the ad:
With all of my investment properties, I hold long term. I never fix and flip. With that said, I have become quite good at knowing what websites to run my property on. Some of them are free and some of them monetize their site with a monthly posting fee.
Now finally, in my opinion the most important feature of the ad are photos. Below are some photos I used to rent out my Condo. This condo was rented out in 10 days. When I buy properties as investments I always buy in a location and of a quality I would want to live in. Below are photos that explain everything we discussed in the first couple of paragraphs about which words sell or rent homes at a higher price
In this case, without me telling you anything, you can see that this condo has vaulted ceilings, maple cabinets, wood floors, stainless steel appliances, corian countertops, etc. The top words that sell and rent homes are also all in the photos. This particular property has the highest return on investment for all of my properties. Could it be the marketing? Could it be the upgrades? Could it be location? or could it be all?
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