_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Real estate prose

I'm going to have to move out of my place within the next couple months because my landlord is selling the house. This is a major bummer for a number of reasons, including the fact that I really like the house and my roommates. For the moment, I'd like to highlight one particular reason this isn't much fun: wading through real estate listings. Specifically, the writing in real estate blurbs is absolutely insufferable.

Sometimes, it's just clunky:
"Secure accommodations where you will reside in proximity to some of our nation’s leaders."

Other times, it tends toward weird and/or carelessly written:
"Crispy hardwood floors!"

But the most popular approach, I'd have to say, is empty buzzword hyperbole:
"...this luxurious downtown Washington DC apartment building puts you at the nexus of District culture and commerce. This Southeast DC apartment building marks a new tier of luxury living in the heart of the nation's capitol. Make your home in Capitol Hill apartments in sophistication and downtown luxury!"

You know, I hear that last building is luxurious. But for all that luxury, they couldn't even decide what to call the neighborhood it's in -- three sentences, three different names. And of those three names (downtown, southeast DC, Capitol Hill), only one is a plausible name for the area where the building is.

The problem is that useful bits of information ("garden-level!") are often strewn amid the wreckage of this prose, meaning that you have to at least skim through countless repetitions of variations on these themes. Wish me luck!

5 comments:

lj said...

Ugh, lots of luck indeed!

Do any of them have sexy bathrooms?

Anonymous said...

Teague!

I'm so sorry you have to move! Are you going to get a condo now, or what? Oy!

--Alex

Teague said...

That's reaching way back, LJ. And certainly of a piece with the phenomenon I'm talking about here...

Alex, I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do, but leaning toward buying a condo. Don't have much time to figure things out, though. Rent or buy, it'll be more expensive than what I've got now.

gastropodblue said...

Suckage! Good luck with the hunt. Any particular areas you're looking at?

Teague said...

Jesse, I'm looking at a number of different neighborhoods, but nothing too far outlying...basically, nothing outside the Capital Bikeshare service area. Capitol Hill, Mount Pleasant, and downtown have the top prospects right now...