Estate agents’ most common spelling mistakes have been turned up by a new website that can filter property search requirements down to very small detail.
The site home-properties.co.uk looked at current descriptions of over 250,000 properties.
The most common mis-spellings were:
- Seperate (mis-spelt 2,303 times)
- Accomodation (2,246)
- Formally (as in “formally an inn”) (815
- Principle (as in “principle bedroom) (804)
- Duel (as in “duel aspect”) 760
- Dorma (as in “dorma window”) 526
- Sort after (“sort after location”) 299
- Steal (“stainless steel sink”) 254
- Menage (an exercise area for horses, that should be spelt “manege”. A ménage has nothing to do with horses, but is a household, as in “ménage a trois”. This word is spelt wrongly by agents more often that it is spelt correctly (244)
- Independant (221)
- Extention (90)
- Volted (as in “volted ceiling”) 11
The site does not normally spellcheck agents’ particulars. It is actually all about allowing home hunters to apply as many filters as they want to their home search, going a lot further than the normal fairly narrow criteria on most sites.
For example, if EYE were searching for a property in Hook, Hampshire, and we wanted a double garage and a study, up would come this page, showing me how many more refinements could usefully be added in.
The site also lets you search by non-location criteria. For instance, if you were keen on Scots baronial houses, you could click that under “style” on the homepage, and up comes this
Comments (22)
The sad thing is many agents have cut back on some ‘Luxuries’ and a secretary is seen by many as a luxury.
This means a number of estate agents today depend on a 20 year old with a driving license and Tesco suit not only to list and sell property but also put a set of details together.
Interesting about the copywriter comment. We looked into it a few years ago to jazz up the descriptions and stand out from the crowd. The cost was far to high for us at the time. Something we may well revisit though in the future.
Tesco do suits? Who knew!
A fair point, Smile, but let’s not forget that the agents themselves have a responsibility to know their rights from their writes and their they’re’s from their there’s!
Let’s face it, the bigger the agent, the higher the necessary standard of written communications etc. etc. For a two-man team to hire a copywriter they’d have to be insane, in much the same way that a multi-national would be insane not to hire one.
True, some of the flak is reserved for the customers. I see a lot of property descriptions come in with so many errors in them that frankly I wouldn’t be interested in viewing the property. Vendors don’t realise it, but how they market the property in the written form will have a major implicit impact on how it is viewed by the public. If you resort to all capital letters (I’ve seen this), jokes (seen this), no punctuation (seen this, too) you start seeing the property as being a reflection of the vendor themselves.
it’s a bit of a ‘psychological’ game but I genuinely believe great copy will get you more business, even if people don’t recognise it on a conscious level.
Dear Mr Harvey
You may be disappointed to know buyers look at pictures first then the bullet points then they pick up the phone or email for more information and book a viewing.
This isn’t bull but statistics on page views published by (or is it buy? LOL) RM and other concerns.
Therefore we don’t really need any write ups at all other than the very basics.
How our trade has fallen since the great days of Roy Brooks.
p.s. If my grammar is 5hite it’s cos I is being a bit lazy and yes I do know the diff between by & buy
Very true Property Paddy.
However, potential vendors will likely be looking at those same particulars and if they see that an agent cannot string a sentence together without including a handful of junior school errors, that agent is very unlikely to be one of the agents that that vendor may think of instructing.
If they cannot handle such simple basics as spelling and grammar, especially on an advert that is intended to be seen by as many people as possible, can they be trusted with the much more ‘important’ aspects of selling my house?
I am not saying i agree with the loss of secretaries, the opposite.
There are some dreadful property particulars out there but to be honest most of them are large corporate or fly by night indies.
I have noticed by us the latest thing agents are doing is just putting room sizes, again i feel this is poor practice, we put as much as possible and look to sell the lifestyle as well as the property.
The saying is true, “You get what you pay for”.
As one of the usual suspects when it comes to being the ‘grammar police’ I’m loving this one unfurl…!
As a young trainee at a firm of Chartered Surveyors & Estate Agents I was finally let loose to produce my first set of sales particulars.
A day later I was summoned to the office of the Senior Partner – a lovably irascible elderly man who did not tolerate fools gladly.
He was holding my beautifully crafted particulars. ‘How do you spell accommodation?’ he asked. I told him it was with one ‘m’. His moustache twitched dangerously.
He handed me a blank piece of paper and a pencil and sent me out to write out the word correctly 100 times. I never felt so humiliated – but I never forgot how to spell it in future 😉
(The ‘twin bowel stink unit’ that appeared later in a set of details was not my doing, thank goodness!)
I def would have written a word out 100 times and given back to him, but it wouldn’t have been accommodation!
But would you have spelled/spelt (delete which you think is right) it correctly, Gump?
;o)
I could have done either Mr PeeBee 🙂
A search on Google for – site:rightmove.co.uk “dinning room” shows over 32,000 misspellings!
Unless lots of houses I have never had the pleasure of visiting feature special rooms where you can go just to make a lot of noise?
Also, speaking of Rightmove, I notice how Rightmove themselves have trouble with the spelling of ‘accommodation’ – if you take a look at a details page in the student section you’ll see a heading on each property, put there by Rightmove, which says ‘Accomodation features’ (just one M).
How do you spell embarrassing?
Wot ! Me ? Misple ???
I don’t fink you shud assum wer all lik that.
As a copywriter this makes me shudder.
Call me a stick-in-the-mud, but misspellings make an agent look unprofessional and uneducated – surely they should know property terms and common idioms (sought after etc.). I think an agent with a typographically perfect website and advertising campaigns will see a slight increase in completions. Mainly because I would leave a website the moment I saw a typo or misspelling that obvious.
Happy Monday, all!
‘will see a slight increase in completions. Mainly because I would leave a website’
will see a slight increase in completions mainly because I would leave a website
Corrected it for you
Welcome 🙂
If we’re going to play that game, Mr Gump, you should have put a comma between completions and mainly.
Mr copywriter, you should of said instructions and not completions, but I was going to let that one slide.
Also there is no comma needed after Monday but I wasn’t feeling that picky earlier
So I will take your comma and raise you a comma and a wrong word 😛
Gump, quick, change ‘…of said…’ to ‘…have said…’ before anyone notices! 😉
Damn! So we are quits on the wrong word lol 🙂
There is a comma after Monday, I assure you of that.
Feel free to contact me personally for a very long-winded and boring lesson in sentence structure, syntax and pronouns!!
(Good grief, I’m boring!)
Sounds like an exciting opportunity, but I think I will pass.
🙂
Thank goodness for that. I’ve enough on my plate as it is!