For Eye-Catching Listings That Get Results, Highlight These Features

After a year of life indoors watching cooking shows, baking bread and taking part in Tik Tok cooking challenges, home buyers seem to have developed a newfound appreciation for the kitchen.

From the pleasurable to the practical, kitchen amenities such as quartz countertops and smart appliances dominate a list of features associated with homes that sold for more than expected in 2020, according to a new Zillow analysis.

Luxury kitchen amenities account for six of the top 10 home features identified with for-sale listings that fetched higher prices than expected. Some of the features come with a hefty price tag, and it’s worth noting here that the analysis did not look at whether sellers recouped what they spent on the features, only that buyers are willing to pay a premium for homes that include those features in their listing description. 

In other words, adding these design features to a home — or including words that describe them to a for-sale listing description — does not guarantee or definitively cause the ultimate sale price to increase or fall as much as observed. The most likely explanation for the findings is that for-sale homes that include these features in their listing descriptions may be of generally higher quality all around (or are at least perceived to be) in ways that are difficult to observe or quantify but which tend to lead to a higher final sale price.

“The features should be viewed as signals that the home may be generally well-crafted and thoughtfully updated,” said Zillow senior economist Jeff Tucker. “For instance, if a home has a steam oven, it likely has other high-end finishes that buyers are willing to pay for. This spring home shopping season, sellers would be wise to flaunt those features in their listing description if they’ve got them.”

Perk up your price by pointing out these details 

Features associated with fewer days on market

If you’re looking for faster sales, consider emphasizing these features if you’ve got them. Listings that mention them are associated with faster sales than expected for homes in their price range.

Features mentioned in slower-selling properties did not fit a common theme this year, although past research shows that — in general — higher-end, custom homes tend to take longer to sell. 

Data source and methodology

Approximately 1.4 million home sales from 2020 were analyzed. In each case, the listing description on Zillow was flagged for whether it contained any variation of each of 221 common expressions of interest. The logged final sale price (or days on Zillow) was regressed against the logged pre-listing Zestimate, which represented Zillow’s best guess of how much it would sell for when listed, as well as (simultaneously) the presence or absence of every one of these 221 listing description features. Only results for features with a statistically significant coefficient and which appeared in at least 100 listing descriptions are reported here.