The Botched Listing That Cost Dollars and Days on Market

TLDR
The sale of a house starts the second someone sees it online. That means pricing, photos, and copy have to line up and tell one story. Get the story wrong and you bleed days on market.

Table of Contents

The Digital Introduction

I was looking at a house on Zillow that somebody had just listed and asked me to review. The renovation looked great. The house was going to sell. But it was not going to sell for what it could have.

That is because of what I call the digital introduction. A house starts getting sold the second a buyer sees it. Before any showing. Before any walk-through. The listing is the filter through which a buyer sees the house from the start, and it has three parts: price, photos, and copy.

Get those three in alignment and the listing gives buyers a coherent digital introduction. Get them out of alignment and the listing creates a conflict before the showing.

The listing is the first pitch, not the showing.

Price It Right or Sit There

Price is step one of the digital introduction. I did not even look at his price. I assumed he had not priced too high. Because if you price too high, the house sits on the market longer than the average days on market. And a house that sits longer than the average starts to make people wonder what is wrong with it.

That already puts a negative filter on the house before photo one even loads. You want to use comps to land inside the range of comps, not above it. Pushing above the range is speculation, which is a different game. Most flippers are not playing that game and should not be.

Pro Tip
Use the current market to tell you what the price should be, not what you wish you could get. A house priced beyond what its comps support may sit and pick up a negative filter.

Photos Tell a Story Whether You Mean To or Not

Step two is the photos. His photos were actually high quality. I was looking at them and they looked fantastic. That was not the problem.

The problem was the story the photos told. He led the listing with a photo of a Frankenstein-looking barn in the backyard. Three different types of siding. The doors were a different color. I love a barn. I have to have a house with a barn. But the second picture is this ugly thing.

What he was thinking buyers thought: sweet, a place to go drink some beers. What the decision maker was actually thinking: there is an ugly monstrosity in the backyard.

I asked him what the three biggest features of the house were. He said it was across from an elementary school. He also called it one story, though I saw stairs in the photos and may have misunderstood him. The renovation itself looked great. Those facts gave me a better story than the barn.

My second, third, and fourth pictures would all be of the front of that house. Maybe one of them somehow showing the elementary school across the street. The next thing I am showing after that, I do not care how you walk into this house, is the renovated kitchen with stainless steel appliances. Because that is the vision people want.

Common Mistake
Leading with your favorite feature instead of the buyer’s favorite feature. The barn was the seller’s favorite thing. The decision maker did not care.

Copywriting Is Just Getting Them to Book

Step three is the copy, the listing description. Copywriting means writing in a way that gets people to take an action. The action here is to book a showing. Nothing more.

The subliminal action is to create the filter through which they see the house, which is the same story the photos are telling. Your words have to back your lead photos. If the photos say cute house across from the school, the copy better say the same.

If the copy tells one story and the photos tell another, buyers feel it even if they cannot name it. They click away.

Pick one story. Make the photos and the copy tell that same story.

Who Is Actually Buying This House

In this critique, Ross pictured a buyer who cared about the kitchen, children, and walking to school. He contrasted that person with someone who mainly wanted a large shed. That was his buyer story for this house, not a rule about every household.

Housing advertising still has to stay neutral about who should live there. The Fair Housing Act covers housing advertising and protects race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, and disability. Describe the property’s observable features without expressing a preference for or against a protected group, and check additional state and local rules before publishing the copy.

The useful lesson is to lead with the property’s strongest supported features rather than the seller’s personal favorite. It is not permission to target or exclude a type of household.

When the lead photo is the barn in the backyard, it can interrupt the story before a buyer reaches the rest of the photos. Leading with the house and the school fits the buyer story described in the source.

Key Concept
Make the price, photos, and copy tell one truthful property story. Do not turn a buyer guess into discriminatory housing copy.

The renovation looked great. That is why Ross pushed so hard on the listing: the online story was holding back good work.

FAQ

What is the first thing I should change on a listing that is sitting?

Start with price against the current range of comps. Then check photo order and copy. In this case the visible problem was leading with the patchwork barn instead of the front, the school, and the renovated kitchen.

How do I know what the real “three biggest features” are?

Get an outside view, as the seller did here when Ross asked the question. In this walkthrough the answers included the nearby school, a one-story claim Ross questioned after seeing stairs, and the good renovation. The front and kitchen then became the stronger lead photos.

Why was the barn a bad lead image in this listing?

It conflicted with the story created by the house, the nearby school, and the updated kitchen. The issue was not a universal ban on backyard photos; it was that this particular photo introduced the wrong feature first.

Can good copy save bad photos?

Copy and photos have to reinforce the same story. Strong words do not fix a photo sequence that leads the buyer toward the wrong feature.

I am just starting out. Do I really need to care about this?

Yes. The house starts selling the second a buyer sees it online, before a showing, so the first impression should support the price and the story you want the buyer to carry into the tour.