Before · the patterns that sold slower
Built in 2001, this 3-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom home offers 1,548 square feet! STUNNING updates throughout — MUST SEE, won’t last! Seller is motivated. Call listing agent to schedule showings.
Free market research for listing agents
The words that sell homes. And the ones that slow them down.
The Central Virginia Listing Remarks Study is a free 10-page report from Keeton & Co Real Estate. We read the public remarks on 16,800 homes that closed in CVR and CAAR MLS over six months and compared each one only with listings in the same MLS and price range, so the numbers measure the wording, not the price point. Tell us where to send it and it is in your inbox in about a minute.
- 16,800
- closed homes across CVR and CAAR MLS
- 6 months
- April to October 2026, resale and new construction
- 32%
- went under contract in 7 days at or above list
Prepared by Daniel Keeton, Broker & Founder, Keeton & Co Real Estate.
Get the studyFree PDF · 10 pages
Send me the Listing Remarks Study
One email, PDF attached. No drip sequence, no call from a recruiter.
What did 16,800 closed sales say about listing remarks?
A fast sale here means under contract within 7 days at or above the original list price. Each number below is the change in that fast-sale rate, in percentage points, against similar listings without the wording. Here are six of the thirteen patterns in the study.
Sold faster
- +5.3 Upgrades with a year“Roof 2022, heat pump 2024.” The strongest common pattern in the data.
- +4.5 Opening with the settingA real street, park or town center in sentence one.
- +3.9 Short remarksUnder 80 words beat long ones. Past about 150, length did nothing.
Sold slower
- −6.1 ALL-CAPS phrasesIn 12% of listings. Shouting reads as desperate.
- −3.1 Hype words“Stunning,” “must see,” “won’t last.” In nearly 1 in 4 listings.
- −2.8 Square footageRepeating the data fields didn’t help. The bedroom count did nothing at all.
The full table also covers “walk to…”, “X minutes to…”, naming schools, showing instructions in the remarks, and price-cut, concession and warranty language, with the context you need to read each one honestly.
What does a rewrite look like?
Page 7 takes a listing description written the way most are and rewrites it with the five-part framework. Here is the before.
After · the framework
The rewrite, the template and the checklist are in the PDF.
Send me the studyWhat’s inside the study?
Eight sections, ten pages. The data first, then a framework you can use on your next listing tonight.
01
The data
Thirteen common wording patterns, ranked by how much they moved the fast-sale rate within the same MLS and price range.
02
The findings
What helped, what hurt, and the three numbers that need context before you act on them.
03
Style vs. substance
Lifestyle scene-painting against plain feature lists, including at $625K and up. The answer surprises most agents.
04
The framework
Five parts, 120 to 180 words. What goes in each part and in what order.
05
The rules
A one-page stop doing / start doing list, plus a fair housing note from the broker.
06
The template
Fill-in-the-blanks remarks and a real before-and-after rewrite.
07
The hook
How to write the first sentence, the one most portals show before they cut the remarks off.
08
The checklist
A print-and-keep page: what to get from the seller, and eleven checks before you hit publish.
Email me the full study
Findings are correlations from public MLS data, not guarantees. The study explains exactly how to read them.
Who put this together?
Daniel Keeton, broker & founder of Keeton & Co Real Estate, with 14 years in real estate. Keeton & Co has offices in Glen Allen, Lynchburg, Charlottesville. The firm studies the market so its agents can win listings, price them right and sell them faster. This study is one of the tools they get, shared because a better-written MLS is good for every agent here.
Want a second set of eyes on a listing’s remarks? Reply to the email the PDF arrives in with the MLS number. Daniel reads those himself.
Get the free study