A listing description is an advertisement for real property, and advertisements for real property are regulated. That is the part most writing advice skips. Before the question of whether the copy is good, there is the question of whether every sentence in it is true, permitted, and about the building rather than the buyer.
Start from facts you have verified
Open the file where the property data lives and write down what you can source: square footage and where that figure came from, bedroom and bathroom counts as the record states them, year built, lot size, what conveys and what does not. A description assembled from a walkthrough and a memory will contain at least one number nobody can stand behind.
Treat every adjective as a claim that needs a fact behind it. “Updated kitchen” is an assertion about work that was done; if you cannot say what was replaced and roughly when, write what you can see instead. “New roof” is a claim with a date attached. “Move-in ready” is a judgement a buyer may not share after an inspection.
Square footage deserves its own sentence of care. If the tax record and the floor plan disagree, say which one you are quoting. Agents get into difficulty over this number more often than over anything stylistic.
The Fair Housing line that gets crossed by accident
Federal fair-housing law prohibits advertising that indicates a preference, limitation or discrimination based on protected characteristics. Most violations in listing copy are not hostile. They are descriptions of an imagined occupant rather than the property.
Describe the building, not the buyer. “Four bedrooms and a fenced yard” is about the house. “Perfect for a young family” is about who should live there. The first is information; the second characterises the intended occupant. The same applies to copy that describes a neighbourhood by who lives in it, references nearby places of worship as a selling point, or frames accessibility features as suiting a particular kind of person.
A useful test: strike every phrase that describes a person and read what is left. If the description still tells a buyer what they would be purchasing, the removed phrases were decoration carrying risk. If it collapses, the copy was selling an idea of a resident rather than a home.
This is a summary of a legal boundary, not legal advice, and state and local rules add protected characteristics beyond the federal list. Your brokerage's compliance guidance governs.
What MLS and brokerage rules add on top
Your MLS has its own content rules, and they are enforced with fines rather than argument. Common ones: no contact details or showing instructions in the public remarks, no links to your own site, limits on all-capital text, and required disclosures for particular property types or conditions. Brokerages add their own rules about disclaimers and required branding.
Read your MLS's remarks policy once, properly, and keep the specific restrictions somewhere you will see them while writing. They are the constraints that make an otherwise good description unpublishable.
Where AI helps, and where it will get you into trouble
A language model is useful for the shape of the paragraph and useless for the facts in it. It will produce fluent, confident copy containing a square footage it inferred, a renovation year it invented, and an occupant description it learned from thousands of listings that crossed the same line.
So the order matters. Verify the facts, then ask for the wording, then check every number and every person-describing phrase in what comes back. Using AI to generate the facts and then writing around them is the sequence that produces the problems.
Never paste a client's private details, an unpublished address or anything from a confidential disclosure into a tool without knowing where that text goes.
A pre-publish check worth running every time
Read the description once for each question, separately, because reading for all of them at once is how things get missed. Is every number sourced and does it match the record you are quoting? Does any phrase describe a person rather than the property? Does it satisfy your MLS's remarks rules and your brokerage's disclaimer requirements? Is anything stated as fact that is actually an opinion about condition?
Then read it as a buyer who will walk through the door expecting what it promised. The description sets that expectation, and the gap between it and the property is where complaints come from.
If you want the prompts and the accuracy guide
The AI Listing Prompt Pack is one ZIP containing 6 files: editable AI prompts and a truth-and-accuracy guide, in Word and PDF. Two of the six are a START-HERE instruction file and a file-verification manifest — support files, not additional template packs. $16.99, digital download — delivered as one ZIP.
What it is not: the prompt templates do not include an AI subscription or a writing service, and they do not check your facts for you. Review accuracy, local advertising requirements, MLS rules and brokerage policies before publishing. The verification in the section above is yours either way.
If listings are one of several things you are writing, the AI Real Estate Agent Starter Kit bundles the listing prompts with consultation scripts, consent-based follow-up, a 30-day content calendar and transaction checklists, plus a Start Here guide. $49.99.
Confirm your own MLS rules and brokerage policy before publishing any description, and take fair-housing questions to qualified counsel rather than to a template.