How to Write a Listing Description for a Property With Unusual Features

Every agent eventually gets the listing that breaks the mold. A converted grain silo. A house with a regulation batting cage in the backyard. A mid-century property with a built-in darkroom and a bomb shelter. These homes sell, but not on the same timeline or with the same copy as a standard four-bedroom colonial.

The mistake most agents make is writing around the unusual feature instead of writing toward it. They bury the indoor koi pond on line three, describe it in apologetic language, or leave it out of the MLS description entirely and hope the photos do the work. That approach wastes both the feature and your time, because the buyer who wants that koi pond is not going to read between the lines to find it.

Unusual features are a targeting tool. They filter out buyers who would never make an offer and pull forward the specific buyer who has been waiting for exactly that property. Your job is to write copy that finds that buyer before anyone else does.

Start by Deciding Whether the Feature Is an Asset or a Disclosure

Not every unusual feature gets the same treatment. A geodesic dome is a design choice that appeals to a specific buyer. A concrete-encased pool in the living room is a material fact that every buyer needs to know exists before they schedule a showing. These are two different situations, and your copy strategy differs accordingly.

For features that are genuine draws, you lead with them. Put the bowling alley, the observatory, the professional-grade ceramics studio in the first or second sentence of your description. The buyer who lights up when they read that is exactly who you want calling. For features that are disclosures first and benefits second, you present them accurately without editorializing. You do not say the underground cistern is "full of character." You describe it factually, place it appropriately in the description, and let the seller's disclosure do its legal work.

The dividing line is simple: would a buyer feel deceived if they arrived at the showing and saw this for the first time? If yes, it belongs in the description as a clear statement. If no, it belongs in the description as a selling point.

Name the Buyer Before You Write the First Word

Before you open a blank document, write down in one sentence who buys this house. Not a demographic profile. An actual mental picture. "A retired architect who has always wanted a live-work space and does not care about resale." "A multigenerational household that needs two separate living wings on one parcel." "A buyer who runs a small-batch woodworking business and needs the detached 2,400-square-foot workshop more than the house itself."

That sentence shapes every word you write. It tells you which features to put first, which language will register, and which details to skip entirely. The buyer for the working pottery studio does not care that the main suite has a tray ceiling. The buyer for the guest house with its own address cares very much about how the utilities are configured. Write for the person who is actually going to make an offer, not for the median buyer in your market.

This exercise also prevents the most common failure in unusual-property copy, which is writing a generic description and tacking the unusual feature onto the end as an afterthought. If the feature is why this property exists, it should be why the description exists too.

Lead With Function, Follow With Feeling

Buyers for unusual properties are often more analytical than the average purchaser. They have already thought through why they want what they want. A buyer shopping for a property with a legal accessory dwelling unit has run the numbers. A buyer looking for a property with equestrian facilities has specific requirements around stall count, arena dimensions, and water access. They are not moved by vague atmosphere. They are moved by specifics.

Lead with what the feature does. "The detached carriage house has a 400-amp electrical service, climate control, and a 12-foot clearance door." That sentence tells a custom car restorer or a small manufacturing tenant everything they need to decide whether to book a showing. Follow that functional statement with context that adds dimension. "It sits at the rear of the half-acre lot with its own alley access, completely separated from the residential footprint." Now they can picture how they would actually use the space.

The feeling layer comes last, and it should be brief. You do not need to tell a buyer how to feel about a property. You need to give them enough accurate information to feel it themselves. Specifics create emotion in real estate copy. Adjectives rarely do.

Handle Objections Inside the Description Itself

Unusual properties carry anticipated objections. Buyers wonder about maintenance costs, insurance, permitting history, and resale. Some of those concerns are legitimate and need to be addressed in conversation. But some of them can be neutralized right in the MLS copy, and doing so saves everyone time.

If the property has a green roof, say so and immediately add the year it was installed, who maintains it, and whether there is a transferable maintenance agreement. If the house was built as a church conversion, note the year the zoning was changed to residential and whether the sanctuary space carries a certificate of occupancy as living space. If the property has a legal nonconforming use, say what it is and what it permits. Buyers who do not understand these details will pass. Buyers who have been shopping for exactly this type of property will recognize that you know what you are talking about.

Avoiding objections in copy does not make them disappear. It just means you spend your first three showings answering the same questions instead of negotiating offers. Address the most common concern in one accurate sentence and move on. That sentence does not need to be defensive. It just needs to be true.

MLS Character Limits Are Not Your Enemy Here

Agents writing for unusual properties often feel constrained by MLS character limits. The instinct is to put everything in the description because there is so much to explain. That instinct is wrong. A dense, exhausting paragraph about every feature of a converted water tower will not help a buyer. It will make them scroll past.

Prioritize three things: the most compelling or defining feature, the functional specifications a serious buyer needs to self-qualify, and one sentence that communicates the overall experience of living there. Everything else goes into the agent remarks, the fact sheet, the marketing email, or the showing conversation. Your MLS description is an ad, not an inventory list. Its job is to generate a showing request from the right buyer, not to document every architectural idiosyncrasy.

If your MLS allows agent remarks or a private notes field, use it. Put the permit history, the utility configurations, the HOA exceptions, and the inspection disclosure summaries there. Keep the public-facing description clean, specific, and pointed directly at the buyer you identified before you started writing.

Montaic is built to handle exactly this kind of property. You enter the details once, including the unusual features, the target buyer, and the functional specs, and it generates an MLS description, a fact sheet, social posts, and nine other content types calibrated to that specific listing. The Fair Housing compliance check runs automatically, which matters especially with properties that have accessory structures, zoning nuances, or occupancy history that could inadvertently cross a line. The free listing grader at montaic.com/listing-grader will score your existing description and show you where unusual-property copy typically loses buyers before they ever pick up the phone.