Automated home descriptions and time management
Now that we’re a few months into Nila June’s public journey, it’s a good time to reflect upon our interaction with the professional real estate agents who have added our service to their set of realtor tools. We’ve observed these agents–pioneers like Willie Ibarra and Deborah Spence–to be innovative, forward thinking, and conscientious. Their use of Nila June demonstrates a fierce determination to give their sellers every advantage in this red-hot market.
It is our privilege to provide them with great property descriptions for a fair price, of course. But we’ve learned that our product also includes somehing that money is not supposed to be able to buy: more time.
Nila June’s direct product is the home description. But we also offer more time. Agents use that time for showing houses and closing deals, taking care of loved ones, helping with the homework, or getting a little exercise.
Nila June: writing great property descriptions and saving time
Estimates for how long it takes to describe a home without Nila June range from a solid hour of work to a morning of intermittent editing. Sometimes an agent will noodle over a description throughout a weekend. Suppose Nila June can save just an hour on each of the six million or so home descriptions that will be written this year. That’s a lot more time for shaking hands, showing houses, and closing deals. It’s also more time for taking care of loved ones, helping with homework, or getting a little exercise. Nila June’s direct product is the home description. Our indirect product is whatever our clients would rather be doing. On the practicalities of Nila June usage, here are a few observations:
It's fun to view Nila June descripons on Zillow, Homes, and other major listings platforms
For each property, Nila June immediately sends the client a long version and a short version of the description. Some agents use one or the other every time. Others sometimes combine elements from each. Many add their own personal twist, reflecting their knowledge of some unique characteristic of the home, yard, or town.
If you Google how to write a great home description, or property listing description examples, or how to describe a home for sale, you’ll find a lot of great advice. But it’s the kind of advice that takes a long time to implement. Or you can start with Nila June and receive a fully automated property description that checks all the boxes, and gives you some room to run with your own perspective.
Taking the Nila June property survey beats briefing a human writer
Our customers want to save time, but they also want a great description. So they are willing to take their time to brief Nila June on the property.
They let us know when we need to increase the length of the survey by adding more detail. We’re always happy to take that call. Development of our product is ongoing, and in consultation with our customers.
When they respond to our survey, our clients spend a fraction of the time that it would take to brief a human writer hired from Fiverr or UpWork. That human writer would then spend two or three days producing the description. Our clients are used to the Nila June descriptions showing up immediately on the screen, and in email. Their investment in completing the survey brings an immediate payoff.
Every customer is a repeat customer.
No two Nila June home descriptions are the same
Sooner or later, every customer is a repeat customer. So we make sure that no two descriptions are alike. Nila June is infused with structural and linguistic variation. That variation interplays with the natural differences in property survey data coming through. Agents tend to alter the final output, too, in order to put their on spin on it.
Variation has never been a problem for Nila June. The special characteristics that are unique to houses, yards, and locations are fully reflected in Nila June descriptions.
How come we don’t talk about Natural Language Generation (NLG) on the site?
We are practitioners of commercially deployable NLG. We have built many NLG systems, beginning with the (cue Charlie Brown’s teacher’s voice). I just bored myself to death writing that sentence. To a commercial real estate agent looking for a great property description, there is nothing less important than understanding the wonders of NLG.
No one says, “I’m going to book a tour of that house because I like the technology behind the property description.” Might as well say, “This letter is great because it was written with a Mont Blanc pen.” No matter the tool that puts the words on the page or screen, the writing is either effective or not.
For Nila June, the written property description is the final and the only expression of the entire endeavor.
So instead of talking about NLG, we talk about its advantages: speed, precision, and the kind of variety that a world class NLG system can support when there is a human writer at the helm. For those interested in more, see my essays on commercially deployable NLG, available at Qwerticulation.com.