Buyers give your photos ten seconds and your words maybe thirty, and most listing copy wastes them. If you’ve searched for property listing description examples in NZ, you’ll have noticed they blur into one another: immaculate this, sought-after that, won’t last long. Buyers stopped reading those words years ago, which is good news — a plainly written listing with real detail in it stands out on Trade Me like a lit window.
A listing description that works has four parts: a headline built on one concrete hook, an opening line about the life a buyer would live there, a middle that trades adjectives for specifics, and a practical close covering school zones, distances, sale method and viewing times. Keep the whole thing to 150–250 words and cut any line you couldn’t back up face to face.
The structure that works
The headline gets one job: one concrete hook instead of three adjectives. “Three bedrooms, a flat section and all-day sun” beats “Immaculate family entertainer” because a buyer can picture the first and has read the second four hundred times.
The opening line should sell the life, not the walls. Nobody buys “open-plan living”; they buy dinner on the deck while the kids kick a ball on the lawn. Write the sentence about the thing you’ll actually miss when you leave. That sentence exists for every home, including yours, and it’s usually the truest line in the ad.
The middle carries the facts, and the close carries the practicalities: the school zone, the walk to the shops or the bus, the method of sale, and when the open homes are. settled.govt.nz’s marketing guidance covers what marketing should communicate; Trade Me’s own how-to for private sellers covers the mechanics of the listing form.
Specifics beat adjectives every time
An adjective is a claim; a specific is evidence. “Warm and dry” asks to be believed. “Ceiling and underfloor insulation topped up in 2021, heat pump in the living room” gets believed without asking. “Handy location” says nothing; “eight minutes’ walk to the primary school, two to the dairy” draws a map in the buyer’s head.
Sun deserves its own sentence, because it’s the question every New Zealand buyer carries into every viewing. Don’t say sunny; say which rooms get it and when. “The kitchen bench gets sun from midday until it drops behind the fence about 7pm in January” is the kind of line that gets a listing screenshotted and sent to a partner.
The same rule keeps you honest. Every line in your ad is a representation you’re making directly, and your disclosure duties don’t pause for marketing. If you can’t evidence “subdividable” or “consented sleepout”, don’t write it; a line that unravels later can take the sale with it.
A property listing description example, before and after
Here’s a made-up example: a three-bedroom 1974 weatherboard on a flat section, on a street we’ve invented for the purpose.
The before, as it would read on half the listings in the country:
Immaculate family entertainer in a sought-after location! This charming, sun-drenched home has it all: three double bedrooms, open-plan living and a private backyard. Opportunities like this won’t last long, so don’t miss out. Your dream home awaits!
Forty words, and not one you could check. No street, no aspect, no age, no distances. Every claim is an adjective, and adjectives are the first thing a buyer’s eye skips.
The after:
Three bedrooms, a flat 600m² section, and sun on the kitchen bench till dinner
Summer at 14 Matipo Lane ends with dinner on the north-west deck, because that’s where the sun goes last. The house is a 1974 weatherboard, repiled in 2018 and rewired in 2020, at the quiet end of the street. Open-plan kitchen and dining, three double bedrooms, one bathroom plus a second toilet in the laundry. Heat pump in the living room; ceiling and underfloor insulation topped up in 2021; fibre to the door. The section is flat and fully fenced, with a garden shed and a vege patch that’s fed one family for eight summers. Ten minutes’ walk to the local primary, two to the dairy, and the bus to town stops at the corner. For sale by deadline, closing 4pm Thursday 20 August. Open homes Saturday and Sunday, 1:00–1:30pm.
About 140 words, and a buyer finishes it able to picture a Saturday there. Notice what’s doing the work: dates, distances, aspect, and one lived detail (the vege patch) that no template could generate. One real detail like that is worth five adjectives, because it’s the only kind of line that proves a person wrote the ad about a home they know.
What to leave out
Leave out your bottom line and your timeline. “Motivated vendor” and “must sell” read as invitations to offer low, and your urgency is nobody’s business until the negotiation, if then. Leave out the reason you’re selling for the same reason; if buyers ask at the open home, answer briefly and honestly.
Leave out anything you can’t prove, as above, and don’t use cheerful copy to paper over a known fault. A weathertightness issue, unconsented work or a boundary dispute belongs in a conversation with your lawyer about disclosure; a coat of adjectives won’t hide it, and trying can cost you the sale and more afterwards. And leave out the exclamation marks. One is plenty, and none is better.
If you sell through Celby, the dashboard gives you a starting draft built from your own property details, and you write the final version. Edit it hard: the facts are yours to stand behind, and the vege-patch lines only ever come from you.
Celby is not a licensed real estate agent. You’re selling your property privately, and all decisions about your sale are your own.
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