Listing video scripts that sell the showing

This is the first line of narration on a lot of listing videos, more or less word for word:

“Welcome to this stunning, meticulously maintained home boasting an abundance of natural light and an open concept floor plan.”

Twenty words, nineteen of which could describe any house in America. Read aloud it takes about eight seconds, which is roughly when a muted viewer has already moved on. Here is how we would rewrite it, one pass at a time.

Four passes on one bad line

1. Cut the welcome. Nobody needs to be welcomed into a Reel. That leaves “This stunning, meticulously maintained home boasting an abundance of natural light.”
2. Delete every adjective you cannot prove. “Stunning” and “meticulously” go. “Abundance of natural light” becomes a question: what actually makes it bright?
3. Answer with a fact. The listing notes say south facing, with windows on three sides of the living room. Now: “This home gets light from three sides.”
4. Make it sound said, not written. “Light from three sides, all day.” Five words, under two seconds, and a viewer can picture it.

That is the whole method. Every line of a listing script should survive the question “how do you know?”. If the answer is a fact about the house, keep it. If the answer is “it sounds nice”, cut it.

What narration is for

The photos already show the rooms. Saying “here is the kitchen” over a shot of the kitchen wastes the viewer's time. Narration earns its place by adding what a picture cannot: the furnace is two years old, the train is nine minutes on foot, the back bedroom is the quiet one because it faces the yard.

A five part structure

Hook, orientation, three specifics, how it lives, close. The hook is one line with the single best fact or feeling. Orientation is where and what, plainly. The three specifics are the features that justify the price, each with a detail. One line on daily life. Then what to do next.

Read it aloud with a stopwatch. If you run out of breath or go over, cut adjectives first, then any line that names what is on screen. Our length planner does this arithmetic for you.

Hooks that name something real

A hook works when it is specific enough that it could only be this house. Some we have written:

• “A kitchen built for people who actually cook.”
• “Every room faces the water.”
• “Four bedrooms, a ten minute walk to the station.”
• “The sellers took out one wall. It changed everything.”
• “Sunday mornings start on this porch.”

“Your dream home awaits” could open any video ever made, and viewers know it. So could “the best house in the city”, which also invites the comment section to argue. We keep a longer list in real estate reel hooks.

Describe the house, never the buyer

The federal Fair Housing Act bars advertising that shows a preference for or against people based on race, colour, religion, sex, disability, familial status or national origin, and many states add categories such as sexual orientation, age or source of income. For scripts the working rule is short: talk about the home and what is near it, never about who should live there.

It also makes the script better. “A fenced yard” is a picture; “perfect for families” is an opinion the viewer has heard a thousand times.

Three scripts to adapt

Brick family home, 4 bed (72 words, about 32 seconds)

“Light from three sides, all day. This four bedroom brick home sits on a quiet street, a short walk from the park. The kitchen opens straight onto the garden, so dinner and the yard are one space. Upstairs, every bedroom fits a queen bed with room to spare. The basement is finished, dry and ready for whatever you need. Showings start Saturday. Book a time through the link.”

One bedroom loft (52 words, about 23 seconds)

“Exposed brick, twelve foot ceilings, and windows that actually open. This one bedroom loft is two blocks from the train and five from the river. The kitchen was redone this year. The bedroom sits at the back, away from the street, so it's quiet. Message me for the floor plan.”

House on a wooded acre (78 words, about 34 seconds)

“One wooded acre, pines on every side. A long gravel drive ends at a white brick house with a covered porch and a fireplace outside as well as in. The living room opens to the kitchen. The primary suite has its own sitting room, and the screened porch is where evenings end. It's twelve minutes to town and you'll hear nothing but trees. Open house Sunday, one to four.”

Writing for the voice, and for captions

Use contractions; “it's” sounds spoken and “it is” sounds read. Write numbers the way you want them said: “twelve foot”, not 12'. Keep one idea to a sentence, because word by word captions break long sentences into fragments that are hard to follow. Leave a beat after the hook. End on an action, not a slogan.

Then hand it to someone who has never seen the house. If they stumble or ask what a line means, rewrite it. You know the floor plan; they do not.

In Property Video Generator the script is written per shot from your photos and details, checked against the facts you entered, and every line is editable. Narration comes from 10 voices in 10 languages, or you record your own against a teleprompter; Pro and Studio can clone your voice after a recorded consent statement. See voice and captions, more worked examples in listing video script examples, or draft one free with the script generator.