What You Put in An Ad Matters...

As I mentioned previously, I read Freakonomics, which was quite interesting. There was a chapter in the book about real estate. They looked at the price at which a house sold and how that house was described in the newspaper ad.

Five Terms Correlated to a Higher Sales Price:
- Granite
- State-of-the-Art
- Corian
- Maple
- Gourmet

Five Terms Correlated to a Lower Sales Price:
- Fantastic
- Spacious
- !
- Charming
- Great Neighbourhood.

Basically, the conclusion the authors had was that the terms correlated with a higher sales price were actually descriptive of the physical qualities of a home, whereas the words correlated with a lower sales price were more vague and ambiguous. They appear to be real-estate code words saying: "We don't have a lot to sell you on. The attributes of the house are not worth describing or maybe the house around it are nicer than this one (i.e., great neighbourhood) which make up for it."

I thought this was enlightening. It will help me when I want to buy a house.