The California Association of Realtors recently cited a Wall Street Journal article that points out it is not just English teachers who notice misspellings and poor grammar. When it comes to luxury-home listings, things such as typos and missing commas can slow sales and drag down prices. An analysis of listings priced at $1 million and up shows that "perfect" listings—written in full sentences without spelling or grammatical errors—sell three days faster and are 10% more likely to sell for more than their list price than listings overall.
On the flip side, listings riddled with technical errors— incomplete sentences, misspellings, outdated jargon, etc.—stay on the market longer before selling and have the lowest percentage of homes that sell over list price. The analysis, conducted by Redfin and Grammarly (an online proofreading application) examined spelling errors and other grammatical red flags in 106,850 luxury listings in 52 metro areas in 2013. The study shows that good spelling and grammar may indicate the agent is attentive to other details as well, like pricing the home correctly and weighing offers.
The analysis also looked at style preferences in listings. One of the most common style gaffes is phrases that are written in all capital letters. These listings saw the least success in terms of sale price, with only 5.6% of homes selling above list price. The practice is most common in Las Vegas, where 28.5% of listings were written in all capital letters in 2013, compared with 8.4% of listings nationwide. However, common abbreviations, like "bdrm" for "bedroom," and short phrases that "pop" fared well by comparison.
All in all, some great, practical advice from C.A.R. and the WSJ. Of course, proper grammar is a must no matter what your job is but we in the real estate industry need be extra cautious since so much of our business relies on written transactions, well-worded marketing and advertising and correspondence.
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