Or, Diaz says, it could mean that a wall between the dining room and kitchen was removed and may refer more to a section of the home than the overall structure and design. ‘Open, modern layout’ could mean that a home was designed with an open-plan layout. “Watch out for a bad foundation, old roofs, old HVAC units, asbestos or lead paint, or obvious large damage.” “You won’t know unless you look at the reports,” Diaz says of listings that indicate that a home requires some work. Varghese isn’t looking for a house that will require serious renovations right away, so she says she avoids listings that say ‘fixer-upper’ or ‘handyman’s dream.’
“You’re going to need to do some work to finish this house,” he says. Referring to a home as an opportunity or having potential also indicates that the new owners should prepare to renovate, Diaz says. Most people could recognize that seeing ‘fixer-upper’ in a real estate ad indicates that the property needs some work, but Diaz says that could mean relatively simple cosmetic updates like paint, or more intensive ones throughout the home. “If you’re telling me I could put a bed in some tiny attic or in an unfinished basement and call it a bedroom, that’s not very helpful.“ “I find wording like ‘up to five bedrooms’ a bit confusing,” Varghese says. “But then I realized in some cases, you are buying the decor when it includes things like crazy paint colours on the walls, wallpaper, old carpeting, vinyl flooring, or ‘70s wood paneling.”Īnd sometimes the information that should be most obvious–for example, how many bathrooms or bedrooms a home has – is still unclear. “Some ads include things like ‘tastefully decorated’ which I used to think didn’t matter because I’m not buying the decor,” Varghese says.
While some terms don’t give enough information, or aren’t specific enough, others can unexpectedly tip potential buyers off to an issue they may never have considered. “It begs the question, what is the rest of the house like and why don’t you want to tell me about it?” Listing photos that only show one or two areas of the home have the same effect, she says. “It’s a red flag to me when a listing only talks about one feature of the house, like the backyard or the one renovated bathroom,” Varghese says. The same thing goes for ‘old-fashioned charm,’ Diaz says, which to him indicates the same thing as character but could also imply that the home needs interior updates.Īnd sometimes buyers should look not just for the words the listing contains, but also the ones it doesn’t. “Does this just mean it hasn’t been renovated in 30 years?” she says.
Varghese says it’s often hard to tell just what a home’s supposed character constitutes from the listing itself. Terms like ‘curb appeal,’ ‘gourmet,’ ‘fixer-upper’ and ‘landscaping’ could result in faster sales, according to one University of Guelph study that looked at 20,000 Canadian home listings.Īnd keywords like luxurious, captivating and updated helped homes in all price tiers sell for more than expected, according to an analysis of 24,000 home listings done by Zillow, an online real-estate marketplace. There is some evidence that certain words may help a home sell more quickly. With research showing that about 60 per cent of the time spent with a real-estate listing is on the photos, sellers and realtors know that they have to make a big impact with the short amount of attention the words in an ad will get. Vague terms, missing information and coded language can make home listings overwhelming and lead to wasted time and effort, she says.
“I find most listings are not very well written – just a paragraph of disjointed text, often in all caps for no apparent reason, sometimes not really telling you the information that is most important to you,” Varghese, who is in the early stages of house hunting, tells Yahoo Canada Finance. But potential buyers like Anuja Varghese of Aurora say that the confusing and inconsistent language used in real-estate ads can make the process confusing even before placing bids or drawing up the paperwork. Looking for a home in the GTA, one of Canada’s hottest housing markets, presents multiple challenges.
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