Creating the language that makes St. Cloud listings sparkle is a skill that advances over time, but for even the most practiced, it’s at its best when it achieves a judicious mix of creativity and restraint. When the restraint part is momentarily abandoned, the results can be disconcerting.

This was the amusing takeaway from a now-famous review of listing language that graced the pages of the Wall Street Journal some years ago. Although the commentary centered on a scientific evaluation of the relative literary merits of high-value listings versus those of median-priced properties, the bottom line was clear-cut: listing language for properties bearing “astronomical” prices tends to be more than a little bit flowery. In fact, the Journal’s “poetic analysis” ran under the headline, “Real-Estate Pros Pen Purple Prose.”

The science involved was the mathematical scale used to evaluate elementary school text readability levels. The Flesch-Kincaid scale assesses a combination of factors like sentence length and the average number of syllables to determine how easy it is to read a text. A sample of 1,000 listings revealed a predictable difference between listing prices. Homes listed below $750,000 averaged 13 words per sentence. Above $10,000,000? 18 words. Pricier property listings averaged 1.7 syllables per word, whereas more economical listings measured 1.55.

Although it might be tempting to correlate persuasive power and sales effectiveness with the more literarily elevated lingo, that was not the final takeaway from the Journal’s analysis. In fact, its critic had some fun with a 222-word listing that registered a high (12^th-grade reading level) Flesch-Kincaid score for a memorable eleven-million-dollar beach home listing. Its lyrical description included how the property was “Majestically poised along the shimmering Gulf of Mexico”—even though the verb “poised” brings to mind the possibility that the house will eventually topple into the shimmering Gulf. Raising that possibility made the ensuing claim, “the unique harmony of this ‘haven of serenity is suitable for undisturbed reflection” open to speculation about just how undisturbed such reflection could be given what’s bound to happen after the poising. It’s a fine example of a high Flesch-Kincaid score that undermines the credibility of the listing.

As someone who is constantly working to create powerful St. Cloud listing language, I believe I can categorically state that a Flesch-Kincaid score is not necessarily a key measure of its effectiveness. A compelling St. Cloud listing pulls in buyers when it unaffectedly describes the strengths of the property through appealing and realistic language. Call me anytime for some recent examples!     

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