[I’m running a “Birthday Month Special” on paid subscriptions for all of August. Only $4.80/month and you’ll have access to all my Ultimate Home Shopping Guides!]
Do you know why Zillow is called Zillow? It’s a portmanteau of “zillion” and “pillow”: “zillion” for the enormous amount of real estate information on the platform, and “pillow” for a place to rest your head, something that evokes home. Make of that what you will.
(That’s a fairly random way into this post, but it came up in my research and I refuse to waste a perfectly good piece of Zillow trivia.)
Anyway, today’s post is about a much tinier piece of Zillow real estate: the little upper-left blurb agents get to put on a listing that appears in search results. Internally, Zillow calls it a “headline.”
Ostensibly, this is a realtor’s chance to stop a buyer mid-scroll. For the most part, agents stick to the standards:
High ceilings
New roof
Wood-burning fireplace
Modern updates
Blah blah blah
Interestingly, Zillow has a guide for writing successful descriptions that include words statistically proven to add value including:
Captivating: Homes with a median estimated value in the top third of the market sold for 6.5% more than their expected price when listings included this word.
Other words found to add value: Stainless (appliances), granite, basketball (hoop or court), landscaped, pergola, remodel, tile, upgraded and updated, impeccable and beautiful.
But when it comes to that little “headline,” sometimes realtors use this space to editorialize and “get creative,” and I love to see it. There’s two categories of amusement: 1) the realtors who are straight-up lying and 2) people who are really trying to sell it. I’ve collected a bunch that caught my attention, taken from listings across the country and across budgets.
“Sweet” side porch, dude.
