This Lake Forest townhouse is being offered as a short sale. It's bad enough the sellers stand to lose $135,894 assuming a sale at this price with 6% sales costs. It's not helping that the listing description is plain awful in terms of basic spelling and grammar.
Here's the listing description, with grammar and spelling issues in bold: High Volted ceilings with lots of windows!Very light and bright!This is the biggest model with 2 car garage. This home is in excellent shape. It has beaitiful stone floors and wood floors. This is a Short Sale. Be the first to get the bank to accept your offer. .. .this is a steal!!! Lots of parking on this side of Boulder. Close to park, pool and school. Seller's paid $530,000 2 years ago and put upgrades in throughout! Nice wrap around yard with new fence, Lot's of nice Cabnets in Garage.
I don't agree with fluffy, extraneous statements that say nothing about the house (e.g. "light and bright"), but I'll keep everything generally as it was before, correcting mostly for grammar and spelling. Here is one way to revise the listing:
Portola Hills townhome features high-vaulted ceilings and lots of windows. Very light and bright! This two-car garage home is the largest model in the tract and is in excellent shape. It has beautiful stone and wood floors. This is a short sale. Be the first to get the bank to accept your offer ... this is a steal! Lots of street parking. The home is also close to the park, pool and school. Sellers paid $540,000 two years ago and upgraded it throughout. Great wrap-around yard with a new fence. Lots of nice cabinets in the garage.
I also changed (corrected?) the mention of what the sellers paid to reflect the past sale that's showing up in Redfin.
The point is not that people who write the descriptions need to have perfect grammar and spelling (who does). A basic spell check and proofreading would be a good first start, though. With more and more potential buyers doing at least part of their house shopping online, and with a possible flood of new listings coming soon if the so-called "wave of foreclosures" materializes, it seems like copywriters and grammar coaches could soon be in very high demand. Hmm...
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Pop grammar and spelling quiz
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2 comments:
Listings like this this make me want to become a real estate agent, just so I can assure my clients that everything in their listings will be spelled correctly. My grammar is pretty good, too. I'm just not sure i have the stomach for that career.
This is one of the worst examples I've seen, but misspellings and poor grammar are common among agents. I've always wondered why buyers or sellers would choose to work with someone who's so sloppy. I would instantly reject an agent who makes errors in a real estate listing. But perhaps that's because I work as a copyeditor. I think this agent needs my services.
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