You can spot AI listing copy from across the room. It opens with “Welcome to”, it calls everything “a rare opportunity”, it describes the kitchen as “a chef’s dream” whether or not anyone has cooked in it since 1994, and it ends by inviting you to “make this house your home”.
None of that is the software being bad at writing. It is the software doing exactly what it was built to do: producing the most statistically average listing description in existence, because you asked for a listing description and gave it nothing else to work with.
Below are seven prompts that produce something you can actually use. Copy them, replace the bracketed parts, and keep the ones that work.
Why a ChatGPT listing description sounds fake, and the three things that fix it
Every weak prompt fails the same three ways.
No specifics. “Three bed house in Denver” could be forty thousand properties. Give it the year built, the square footage, the lot, the two things that actually make this house different, and the one thing wrong with it. Specifics are what stop it reaching for stock phrases.
No constraints. Without a word count it writes 400 words. Without being told not to, it invents features. Without a ban on certain phrasing, it will hand you a fair housing problem. Half of a good prompt is instructions about what not to do.
No anti-example. This is the trick almost nobody uses. Tell it explicitly which phrases are banned. “Do not use: welcome to, nestled, boasts, a rare opportunity, chef’s kitchen, entertainer’s dream, make this house your home.” The improvement from that single line is larger than from anything else you can add.
1. The standard MLS remarks prompt
The one you will use most. Everything else here is a variation on it.
You are an experienced listing agent writing MLS remarks.
Property: [year built], [style], [square footage], [beds] bed, [baths] bath, on a [lot size] lot in [neighbourhood, city].
Standout features: [two or three specific things].
Known weaknesses: [the dated kitchen, the small third bedroom, the busy road].
Recent work: [new roof 2024, rewired 2022].
Write MLS remarks of [140] words or fewer.
Rules:
– Describe the property, never the buyer. No language about who it would suit.
– Do not invent any feature I have not listed.
– Lead with the single strongest thing about this property.
– Mention the known weakness honestly in one short clause rather than hiding it.
– Banned phrases: welcome to, nestled, boasts, a rare opportunity, chef’s kitchen, entertainer’s dream, make this house your home, must see.
– Plain declarative sentences. Vary sentence length.
The “known weaknesses” line does more work than it looks like. Copy that acknowledges a flaw reads as credible, and credible copy converts better than copy that sounds like every other listing on the page.
2. The honest fixer-upper prompt
Dated properties are where AI copy gets worst, because it tries to be relentlessly positive and ends up sounding evasive. Buyers read evasive as “something is wrong here”.
[Property details as above]
This property needs work: [list what needs doing].
Write MLS remarks of 130 words or fewer for a buyer who is comfortable with cosmetic renovation.
Rules:
– Be straightforward about the condition. Do not use euphemisms like “full of potential”, “priced to sell”, “TLC” or “bring your vision”.
– Emphasise what cannot be changed: the lot, the location, the layout, the light.
– State plainly what has already been done so the buyer knows what they are not paying for.
– Do not describe the buyer or who this suits.
– Do not invent features.
3. The higher-end prompt
Luxury copy fails in the opposite direction: it inflates until it means nothing. The fix is restraint written into the instructions.
[Property details]
Architect or builder, if known: [name]. Materials worth naming: [oak, limestone, Crittall].
Write MLS remarks of 160 words or fewer for a property at [price point] in this market.
Rules:
– Understated tone. Confidence comes from specificity, not adjectives.
– Name materials, makers and dates rather than using words like “luxurious”, “stunning”, “exquisite” or “bespoke”.
– At most one sentence about lifestyle, and only if it describes the property doing something, not the owner.
– No superlatives that cannot be verified.
– Do not invent provenance, materials or dates.
4. The awkward property prompt
Vacant land, a unit with no natural light, a house on a difficult road. Properties where the honest description is the selling point, because the right buyer is looking for exactly this and the wrong buyer wastes everyone’s Saturday.
[Property details]
The difficult part: [what it is].
Why someone would want this anyway: [the reason].
Write MLS remarks of 130 words or fewer.
Rules:
– Do not hide the difficult part. Address it directly in the first half.
– The goal is to attract the small number of buyers this genuinely suits and deter everyone else. Filtering is the job.
– Facts over persuasion. Zoning, dimensions, access, utilities.
– Describe the property, never the buyer.
5. The prompt that learns your voice
Do this once and every later prompt gets better. You are giving it examples of what good looks like in your hands rather than in general.
Below are [five] listing descriptions I wrote myself. Read them and describe my writing voice back to me: sentence length, how I open, what I emphasise, what I avoid, how formal I am, how I close.
[paste your five best descriptions]
Then write a short style guide for yourself, in bullet points, that you will follow whenever I ask for listing copy from now on.
Keep the style guide it produces. Paste it at the top of future prompts, or save it in the assistant’s custom instructions if yours has that feature. This is the closest thing to a shortcut in the whole article.
6. The one-listing, five-channels prompt
Where the time actually goes. Same property, five very different registers and five different length limits.
Here are the MLS remarks I have approved for this listing:
[paste your final remarks]
Rewrite this for five channels. Do not add any fact that is not in the original.
1. Instagram caption, under 125 words, conversational, one line per idea, no hashtags yet.
2. Email to my buyer list, under 100 words, written to someone who has seen forty listings this month.
3. Text message, under 40 words, no exclamation marks.
4. Printed flyer, under 80 words, complete sentences.
5. Open house sign copy, under 20 words.
The instruction not to add facts matters here. Left to itself it will helpfully invent a detail for the Instagram version, and that version is the one that ends up screenshotted.
7. The fair housing scrub
Run this on everything, including copy you wrote yourself. It takes ten seconds and it catches the phrases that have been in your writing so long you no longer see them.
Review the listing copy below for US fair housing compliance.
Flag any phrase that:
– describes the buyer or who the property would suit, rather than the property
– references or implies race, colour, religion, sex, familial status, national origin or disability
– uses coded language such as safe, quiet, exclusive, desirable, walkable to church, family neighbourhood
– makes a claim about schools, crime or demographics
For each flag, give the phrase, why it is a risk, and a compliant replacement that describes the property instead.
Do not rewrite the whole thing. Just the flags.
[paste copy]
This is a checking tool, not a compliance guarantee. It will miss things and it occasionally flags something harmless. Your own read and your broker’s policy still govern. There is more detail on where the legal line sits in the piece on what MLS rules actually say.
The words to delete every time
Two lists. The first is a style problem, the second is a compliance problem.
Tells you it was written by a machine: welcome to, nestled, boasts, a rare opportunity, chef’s kitchen, entertainer’s dream, seamlessly blends, timeless elegance, make this house your home, don’t miss, must see, priced to sell.
Creates real risk: perfect for young professionals, ideal for families, great for empty nesters, walking distance to church, safe neighbourhood, quiet street, exclusive community, good schools, up and coming.
The second list is the one to memorise. Each of those describes people or makes an unverifiable claim, and both are how listing copy turns into a complaint.
Before it goes live
- Check every fact against the property record. The invented feature is the most common failure by a wide margin.
- Read it aloud. Anything you would not say to a client at a showing comes out.
- Run the fair housing scrub, then read it yourself anyway.
- Cut the first sentence. It is almost always throat-clearing, and the second sentence is usually the better opening.
The same discipline works on the other piece of copy every agent writes badly: there are prompts for a bio that does not read like every other bio.
Common questions
Will buyers notice the description was AI-assisted?
Not if you edited it. What people recognise is not “AI writing”, it is generic writing, and generic writing was widespread in listings long before any of this existed. Specific, honest copy reads as human because that is what a human bothers to produce.
Do I have to disclose that AI helped write it?
Generally no for text you have edited and approved, in the same way you would not disclose using a template. Disclosure obligations attach to altered images and misleading claims. Your brokerage may still have its own policy, so ask.
Which assistant is best for this?
All the major ones handle listing copy competently, and the prompt matters far more than the brand. Use whichever you already have open. If you have none, the starter guide covers the differences and what each costs, and there is a closer look at ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot side by side. The same prompt discipline works on follow-up emails, which is where most agents lose more time than they do on listing copy.
Why does it keep inventing features I never mentioned?
Because it predicts what usually appears in text like this, and most listings mention a garage, so yours gets one. The explicit instruction not to invent features reduces it substantially but does not eliminate it. Checking every factual claim is not optional, and it never will be.