Write Your Best Real Estate Headlines

Real estate headlines have serious lifting to do.

They have to break through a lot of noise online and in print. But it's not about using all caps or exclamation marks. Real estate headlines need to grab readers by "the feels," as they say.

And this story attributed to French poet Jacques Prévert demonstrates the power a headline can have.

Prévert saw a beggar who had a sign that said "Blind Man Without a Pension." Prévert asked him how it was going. The beggar replied, "Oh, very badly. People pass by and drop nothing in my hat, the swine."

Prévert took the sign from him and altered it.

A few days later, he went up to the beggar and again asked him how things were going. The beggar said, "Fantastic! My hat fills up three times a day."

Prévert had written the following on the beggar's sign:

"Spring is coming, but I won't see it."

The lesson? What you say isn't nearly as as important as how you say it. But at its heart, this story demonstrates the power of a headline. Let's look at it as a headline test.

Headline A: Blind Man Without a Pension
Headline B: Spring is coming, but I won't see it

Headline A is the actual fact. Headline B is the story. In old-school marketing parlance, A is the steak and B is the sizzle.

So how can you apply this to real estate headlines? Here are some tips for adding some old-school sizzle to your headlines for homes and for yourself!