Poor marketing, terrible ideas.
Bad spelling, poor grammar.
Awful salesmanship, terrible write-ups, mis-pricing, and mistakes a-plenty.
Let’s have a look at just a handful of poor MLS listings from the past week…
1) “I’m Ron Burgundy?”
Remember “Anchorman?” When somebody accidentally types a question-mark into the teleprompter, and Will Ferrell says, “I’m Ron Burgundy?” like it’s a question?
“People, People, listen up – Ron will read WHATEVER you write on the prompter!”
Well, this listing in the Brewery Lofts reminded me of that. Maybe it’s a typo, but it’s a bad one:
2) Define “Expert”
This one is borderline insulting to the reader.
It’s one thing to be a know-it-all, but it’s another thing to tell the potential buyers, before they’ve seen the house, or had a chance to value it, that the list price is accurate, and that if you disagree, you’re a moron…
3) Swimming, anyone?
Here’s a house with a pool, and the sellers (and probably the agent…), want to market it to everybody – whether they’re looking for a pool, or not.
The question is: would you trust the seller to fill in the pool and lay grass – as it should be done? No corner-cutting? Make sure there’s no giant sink-hole in the future when your kids are playing on the “newly-laid grass,” and that the grass actually grows?
4) Peace, Out.
I know it’s probably low-brow humour to make fun of spelling mistakes, and people with English as a second language, but in the past (ie. when I’ve done this before….) most of my readers comment something like, “I’m sorry, but if you’re being paid a 5% commission, you should be able to speak English and spell.”
Well having said that, what’s the difference between “masterpiece” and “a master peace?”
This listing below is for a “luxury condo,” which of course, is serene, tranquil, quiet…..and peaceful…
5) On sale now: calculators…
This is the biggest house I’ve ever seen!
This house is over 22,000,000 square feet! Seriously – I added this up…
On MLS, we can use feet, and we can use metres. And some agents don’t know how to convert from one to the other, because, they don’t know WHICH IS BIGGER!
“Do I divide, or multiply? Ah well, I’m sure it’s all the same!”
6) Green with envy…
Sometimes, listing agents try to create a sense of luxury that isn’t really there.
Other times, they try to tell you what to do, and how to live in the house, like, “Sit on your porch and watch the world go by.”
In this example, they do both, by telling you that living in this positively mediocre condo on St. Clair will make you better than your friends – since we know that’s the goal for all of us…
7) “What the heck is marketing?”
Since the dawn of time, we’ve seen products and services priced at something ending in $.99.
$9.99 sounds a lot better than $10 even does it not?
If it didn’t work, there wouldn’t be billions of products around the world being priced as such.
When it comes to pricing real estate, it’s really no different. But it’s even MORE important in real estate, since we often search properties with given parameters, such as price.
Take a look at this listing below. Anybody who has set up a search “under $500K” will not receive this listing, because it’s not priced at $499,900, like every other listing in Toronto would be:
Let’s see what this week brings us.
One can only imagine…
Philip
at 11:10 am
Out of curiosity, and ESL issues aside, what do you think the AVERAGE agent’s IQ is Toronto?
This site tells me the average in Canada is 97/
http://www.statisticbrain.com/countries-with-the-highest-lowest-average-iq/
I am guessing the average college educated person is higher, and that most people that I know would be above 110…the lower standard deviation aren’t people that generally are involved in business and whatnot.
I gotta say, from my experience, I have to say the average broker in Toronto must have an IQ between 100 and 110, probably lower than say a bank teller’s. Obviously, there are some excellent people, and the job is often more ‘salesy’ than cerebral (ie some scientists with 140 IQ levels would be terrible at selling houses).
What does everyone think?
moonbeam!
at 12:46 pm
Haha Philip, I almost spilled my coffee laughing at your comment!! I’m guessing you’re a repeat purchaser of Luminosity Brain Training! (really, is it working? is it training your brain?)
Philip
at 1:02 pm
My brain is just fine. IQ is clearly a shitty way to figure out intelligence, but unless you have a better one, such as possibly proclivity with opening blister sealed packs or disdain for gangsta rap, then I think we’re stuck with it.
Think about that though – 97? Canadians are dumb! When you consider that for every agent that puts up listings like those above, they are in the industry because someone equally stupid, or stupider decides to use them to represent them. Greater fool theory I suppose.
http://www.woosk.com/2008/11/list-of-iqs-by-profession.html
bugeyedbrit
at 9:57 pm
Shouldn’t that be ‘more stupid’, rather than stupider?
FroJo
at 12:41 pm
Mls, Please Use Normal Capitalization. Where Was The Software Developed, Germany?
Room measurements are deceptive to the point of useless. And where’s the rest of the data, like age of building and approximate total square footage. If it’s available to other public sites, why isn’t in on the public MLS site? Actually, I can guess at the reason why. Still, it’s not a good reason.
I know MLS is just one tool and nothing beats a good agent. Anyway, keep up the good fight, David!
Frosty
Gena
at 3:57 pm
does this surprise you?
Darwinism.
Nifty
at 4:31 pm
Reading MLS listings gives me such headaches and rage. A lot of them seem to just be copy and paste (hence many inaccuracies). In most jobs, such a lack of attention to detail would get one fired! And these agents use such terrible, grainy, blurry pictures with messed up ratios too. I also don’t get The Typing Like This or the extreme short form. Question: if you’re a realtor, is it looked down on to not type with every word capitalized and in proper sentences? If it is a quickness thing, and trust me I get it as I type the same sort of sentences again and again to clients, may I introduce you to an app called Texter where you can put in full sentences and it auto types it for you when you put in a shortcut? It would definitely make those listings more legible!
It also seems like everyone I know is now becoming a realtor or already a realtor!