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Ask any writer — little else is as intimidating as the blank page.
Agents who write their own listing descriptions know this feeling too. But you don’t have to for much longer, because a fast-growing technology is here to cure your creative anxiety.
By now, you’ve likely heard of ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence writing tool, a bot that can assemble a relatively coherent few lines of copy using a simple prompt. (If you haven’t, catch up here.) Inman used the bot to test how it reacted to real estate industry news headlines. The results were pretty good, inspiring an examination of what other options are out there and how they may help agents who struggle with filling their MLS’s property description fields.
What makes a good listing description?
An evocative property brief shouldn’t simply reiterate what the person searched for. It needs to complete the picture. A home shopper has images of the home’s basics, leaving the agent to write why that house is better than its comparables. This requires some creativity and sales tact, and thus why it’s a challenging endeavor. Additionally, the seller needs to like it as much as the search engines do.
Before jumping into bed with a bot because you’re stuck in creative muck, consider the following resources for traction:
- 5 keywords clients want to see in a listing description — and what to avoid
- 5 tips to boost listing descriptions
- 7 tips for writing listing descriptions buyers can’t pass up
- How to sell more real estate with great listing descriptions
- 7 listing description mistakes you’re probably making
- 15 ways to make your property descriptions more inclusive
ChatGPT Alternatives
Nila June
Nila June was reviewed by Inman in 2021 and its founder, Greg Williams, remains a credible source on this emerging software category and the larger topic of natural language processing.
Nile June is as straightforward as software gets. There are no CRM integrations, drip campaign tools or bold, mobile-inspired user interfaces. The software uses a logic-based HTML form (meaning: the form reveals and hides follow-up fields based on previous responses) to capture contextual data about a property. It offers two editions for each property, a shorter one for MLS input and a longer-form version for use in marketing collateral and websites.
Williams is a writer, so he developed his product to integrate synonyms, creative turns of phrase and more engaging language. It shows.
Jasper
Jasper may be the most mainstream of AI-based copywriters. It advertises use for marketing content, Google ad headlines, social media captions, support chat, blog posts and e-mail newsletters, among many other business use cases. It functions in 26 languages and appears better suited for larger organizations in which creating content is an essential business function. Its lowest-level subscription is $40/month. Then again, a good copywriter normally costs well over $100/hour.
ListAssist
ListAssist is out of New Zealand, and its principals attended Inman Connect Las Vegas to explore our market’s tolerance for their offering.
This software is unique in how it collects data on a home to write about, using data collected from uploaded images and a tagging system. To generate a description, users click feature tags for each room or primary area to be included while adding a few manual terms to the list. They then briefly describe the location and review and edit the result. If needed, edits are made in sections or the entire thing quickly regenerates. ListAssist then asks each user to rank the copy as a form of in-app feedback.
Because ListAssist is real estate-focused like Nila June, should the company decide to enter the U.S. market, it should pick up momentum pretty quickly.
Boo
Boo boasts a few neat features that may appeal to the agent who actually does like to write but needs a mental boost from time to time. This functions on the whole as writing software, but with GPT-3 engine and Markdown Code (in-script commands for formatting text) to help your thoughts surface quickly on the screen.
Using a series of commands, templates and even in-app search (great for learning about nearby amenities) users can crank out extensive marketing pieces in little time. Boo would be a nice value-add for your marketing staff to create video scripts and longer-form home descriptions.
ListingAI
Out of Canada, ListingAi is also real estate centric and pumps out property and social media takes in rapid fashion. It pares down the interface to a series of simple radio button selection fields and text-entry fields with 200-character limits to collect a home’s information. It even asks if you want the overall tone of the description to be “neutral” or “creative.”
However, using it to craft a description of my home, I found it mainly linked together exactly what I entered into a worthy but not overly unique property description. But again, the point of these tools is to save time and to have them perform something you don’t like doing. In that respect, ListingAI may be just what you need.
It’s not unreasonable to think that come this time next year, this list could be longer and a few of its entries common components of your marketing stack. The real power here is persistent improvement, they’ll get better as more people use them, whether for real estate or muffler manufacturing.
It doesn’t really matter how an automation is applied, only that it gets better each time.
