Agents Don’t Have a Writing Problem. They Have a Story-Sense Problem

A real estate agent announces a sale on LinkedIn. The post tells us the property sold, perhaps how quickly it sold, whether there were multiple offers, and what the agent did to get the transaction across the finish line.

There may be nothing wrong with the writing. It can be clear, professional and factually complete.

And yet, after reading it, I sometimes find myself wondering about something the post never explored: What was the story of the property itself?

That question matters because writing and story sense are not the same skill. You can explain a transaction perfectly well and still overlook the more interesting story sitting inside it.

The Transaction Is Only the Surface

Real estate communication naturally revolves around transactions. A property is listed. An offer is accepted. A deal closes. The agent reports the result.

That makes sense. The transaction is the business event.

But a property exists before it becomes a listing and continues to have meaning beyond the closing. People lived there, worked there, built businesses there, raised families there or watched the surrounding neighborhood change. The building may have an unusual history. The land may have changed uses. The seller may have owned it for decades. The buyer may be about to change what happens there next.

Any one of those details can lead somewhere.

The important point is not that every property contains a remarkable story. Many will not. The point is that we usually do not know until somebody looks.

Story Sense Begins With Curiosity

Reporters develop a habit of asking questions beyond the immediate event.

Who was here before?

What changed?

Why now?

Has this happened before?

What makes this property different from the one next door?

Who is affected by what just happened?

What happens next?

Those questions do not guarantee a story. They are how you find out whether one exists.

That is story sense: recognizing that the obvious event may not be the whole event.

An agent may see a closing. Someone looking at the same transaction through a reporting lens may see a family property changing hands for the first time in 60 years, a neighborhood landmark entering a new chapter, a commercial building being converted to housing, or a transaction that reflects a larger change in the local market.

The closing gives you the occasion to look. The reporting tells you whether there is anything more to see.

The Property Can Be a Character

Real estate professionals understandably tend to describe properties through their marketable features: bedrooms, bathrooms, acreage, renovations, views, amenities and location.

A story asks different questions.

How did the property get here? What happened there? Who shaped it? What role did it play in the community? What changed around it? Why is it changing hands now?

Consider an ordinary-looking house built decades ago. The listing description may appropriately tell buyers about the kitchen, lot, roof and nearby schools.

But suppose a little research establishes that the original owner operated a neighborhood business from the property for 40 years. Or that the house was one of the first built when farmland became a subdivision. Or that three generations of the same family lived there before the current sale.

Those details may or may not belong in the listing description. That is a separate editorial decision.

But they may create a feature story, a neighborhood story, a client story, a local-history story or material worth bringing to a journalist's attention.

The mistake would be assuming that because the information does not belong in the MLS description, it has no communication value.

The People May Be the Story

Sometimes the property is only the setting.

The stronger story may belong to the people involved.

A first-time buyer who spent years preparing to qualify for a mortgage may have a story. So might an elderly owner leaving a home after half a century, siblings selling inherited property, a business owner purchasing a first commercial location, or a family returning to a community they left years earlier.

But this requires care.

A client's life is not raw material simply because the agent helped with the transaction. Privacy, consent and professional judgment come first. Some stories should remain private. Others can be told without identifying the client. Some clients may actively want to tell their stories.

The question is not, “How can I turn my client into content?”

It is whether something genuinely worth understanding happened—and, if so, whether it can appropriately be told.

The Neighborhood May Be the Story

Sometimes neither the property nor the client carries the strongest angle.

The neighborhood does.

One transaction can point toward a larger change: older homes being replaced, commercial space becoming residential, new buyers entering an area, longtime businesses disappearing, vacant properties returning to use, or development moving into a previously overlooked part of a market.

One sale does not establish a trend. That distinction is important.

But one sale can give you a reason to investigate whether something larger is happening.

That is another part of story sense: knowing the difference between seeing a clue and proving a conclusion.

The Agent May Have a Story Too

There are also situations in which the agent's work genuinely deserves attention.

Not because the agent “worked tirelessly” or “went above and beyond”—phrases so common that they tell us very little—but because something unusual actually had to be solved.

Perhaps a transaction involved a difficult title problem, an unusual property type, multiple jurisdictions, a complicated estate, a financing obstacle, a relocation problem or months of work that changed the eventual outcome.

In that situation, “Just Sold” may be the least interesting part of the story.

The more useful account may reconstruct the problem, explain what made it difficult, show what was done, and describe the result.

That demonstrates professional ability without requiring the agent to announce how exceptional the service was.

The evidence does the work.

Storytelling Does Not Mean Embellishment

There is a danger in encouraging people to “tell more stories.” They can begin trying to manufacture drama where none exists.

That is not what I mean.

Story sense is not about making an ordinary transaction sound extraordinary. It is not about forcing an emotional arc onto every closing or turning every client into an inspirational character.

It is the opposite.

You investigate first.

If the reporting uncovers something meaningful, you develop it. If it does not, you leave the transaction alone and communicate it for what it is.

A routine sale is allowed to be a routine sale.

Good story judgment includes knowing when there is no larger story.

Different Stories Need Different Forms

Finding a story does not mean automatically writing a press release.

A property's history might work as a website feature. A client's experience might become a case history with permission. A neighborhood observation might justify additional reporting before becoming an article. An unusual transaction might support a LinkedIn post. A development affecting hundreds of people might warrant media outreach.

The communication instrument comes after the story has been identified.

This is where real estate communication often gets reversed. People choose the format first—“We need a press release,” “We need a post,” “We need a video”—and then go looking for something to put inside it.

A better sequence is to determine what happened, investigate whether there is a story, establish who would care, and then choose the form that fits.

The Photograph Can Reveal the Same Problem

Story sense also affects visual communication.

A posed photograph of an agent standing beside a SOLD sign tells us that a transaction occurred. There is nothing inherently wrong with that photograph.

But compare it with an image that documents something particular about the property, the people, the neighborhood, the work involved or the change that has taken place.

One records the announcement.

The other may help tell the story.

That is why newsrooms often think differently about photographs than marketers do. A useful news photograph is not merely attractive. It shows something the audience needs to see.

The same principle applies to the writing.

Before You Write “Just Sold,” Look Around

The next time a transaction closes, the useful question may not be, “What should I write about this?”

Start earlier.

What happened here besides the sale?

Who owned this property before?

How long had they owned it?

Has its use changed?

Is there anything unusual in the public record?

What was happening in the neighborhood when it was built?

What problem did this transaction solve?

What changed because the property changed hands?

Is this transaction connected to anything larger happening in the market?

Most of those questions may lead nowhere.

That is fine.

Reporting often works that way.

But occasionally one question opens another, and suddenly the ordinary closing no longer looks quite so ordinary.

Writing Comes After Seeing

Real estate agents produce an enormous amount of communication. Listings, emails, market updates, social posts, client materials, biographies and transaction announcements are part of the daily work.

Improving the writing matters.

But there is another skill underneath it: noticing what is worth writing about.

A person can learn sentence structure, headlines, formatting and social-media technique and still miss the story sitting directly in front of them. Conversely, someone who recognizes a genuinely interesting story can work with a professional writer, PR practitioner or journalist to develop it properly.

That is why I no longer think the central problem is simply that agents need to become better writers.

Sometimes the writing is perfectly good.

The story was the thing nobody stopped to look for.