When selling luxury, “sexy” is preferable to “lovely”
As Pat Benatar sang, “love is a battlefield” – and as realtor.com analysts have found, love is also a lousy way to sell a home.
According to an analysis of 1.6 million home listings, realtor.com researchers found that “love” was a more common term in the descriptions of lower-priced homes, while “sexy,” “seductive” and “romance” were most likely to appear in luxury listings; so while “love” appeared with listings priced $250,000, “sexy” homes had a median price of $620,000, while “seductive” homes listed at $640,000 and “romance” listed at a whopping $820,000.
Javier Vivas, a realtor.com research who spoke to The Wall Street Journal about the findings, said the terms come down to commonality.
“Love is basic,” Vivas said. “It’s a pre-canned pitch to generically describe something beautiful.”
There was an interesting regional divide in emotional listing descriptions – while listings in the high-priced West most commonly used “romantic” and “seductive,” listings in the relatively affordable Midwest rarely saw such terms, even the ubiquitous “love.”
Here is a chart with realtor.com’s full findings (the research ran through Feb. 1 data):
| List Price | “Love” | “Romantic” | “Sexy” | “Enamored” |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under $500,000 | 92,434 | 947 | 52 | 15 |
| $500,000 to $1 million | 14,264 | 642 | 22 | 7 |
| $1 million to $5 million | 5,281 | 617 | 37 | 3 |
| $5 million-plus | 311 | 129 | 10 | 0 |
| List Price | “Love” | “Romantic” | “Sexy” | “Enamored” |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under $500,000 | 6.90% | 0.07% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| $500,000 to $1 million | 7.75% | 0.35% | 0.01% | 0.00% |
| $1 million to $5 million | 6.56% | 0.77% | 0.05% | 0.00% |
| $5 million-plus | 4.45% | 1.85% | 0.14% | 0.00% |