Property description templates for every UK property type
Twelve property description templates for UK estate and letting agents — a detached house, a studio flat, a room in an HMO, a new-build plot, a shop unit — each with a full worked example, a material information block and five tips written for that property type.
A description that works for a four-bedroom detached house on a generous plot is the wrong shape for a studio flat or a room in a shared house. The reader is different, the questions are different, and the material information that carries the most weight is different: lease length and service charge on a flat, level access and plot size on a bungalow, use class and measured floor area on a shop unit. Each template below starts from what its own audience reads first.
All twelve follow the same structure, so a first draft takes a couple of minutes: a headline in portal house style, a three-paragraph body, then a MATERIAL INFORMATION block of the kind UK portals now expect to see.
The twelve property types
| Template | What the description has to get right |
|---|---|
| Detached house | Detached buyers are usually trading up and comparing on substance: plot size, parking, separation from neighbours and room to grow. |
| Semi-detached house | The challenge with a semi-detached house is that the listing next door may be nearly identical, so your description has to earn its differences: extensions, refitted rooms, garden length, which side is attached. |
| Terraced house | Terraced houses attract first-time buyers and investors, and the weakest descriptions apologise for what the property is not. |
| Flat | Flats carry more material information than almost any other property type: lease length, service charge, ground rent and how the block is managed can shape a buyer's mortgage as much as their decision. |
| Bungalow | Bungalow buyers are frequently downsizers or people who need single-level living, so lead with level access, plot size and garden rather than writing it up like a small house. |
| New-build home | New-build descriptions live or die on precision about stage and specification: "off-plan", "under construction" and "ready to occupy" set very different expectations for completion dates and mortgage offers. |
| HMO | Writing up a room in an HMO is a lettings job, not a sales job: you are describing one lettable room plus shared facilities, for a tenant who cares about housemates, bills and the walk to work. |
| Studio flat | Studios sell on layout and position, and the reader is usually a first-time buyer or an investor doing yield sums. |
| Cottage | Cottage buyers are buying a lifestyle as much as a floor plan, but they are also the buyers most likely to meet surprises: non-standard construction, oil-fired heating, private drainage or listed status. |
| Maisonette | The first job of a maisonette description is definitional: many buyers do not know how a maisonette differs from a flat, so the private entrance and the floors it occupies need spelling out. |
| Retirement property | Retirement property has the most clearly defined audience in residential sales — and often two readers, the buyer and the family member helping them move. |
| Commercial property | Commercial descriptions are read by occupiers and their advisers, who filter hard on facts: use class, floor area, deal terms and rates. |
What each template page includes
- A complete worked example — headline and body — written for that property type, finishing with the material information block.
- Five writing tips for the type: the details buyers and tenants ask about first, and the ones agents most often leave out.
- The free template generator, pre-set to that property type, so you can produce a draft from your own facts without signing in.
Using a template without sounding like every other listing
A template fixes the running order, not the content. The listings that stand out on a portal are the ones carrying specifics only the person who visited the property could supply: the garden's length and orientation, the walk to a named station, the year the boiler went in, which floor the flat sits on. Swap those in for the adjectives and the same template produces a different description every time. Our guides on writing descriptions that sell and writing a letting advert work through the method, and there are ten more property description examples to compare against.
Whichever type you start from, the material information is the part worth checking twice. The material information checklist covers Parts A, B and C field by field, and the AI generator prompts you for each of them — council tax band, tenure and lease details, EPC rating, heating, utilities, broadband, mobile signal, parking, flood risk, restrictions and the rest — then reproduces the values you supply, verbatim, as a portal-ready block beside the description. It looks nothing up and checks nothing: what you leave blank is left out rather than guessed at, and standing behind the accuracy of what you enter remains your job. Three listings a month are free with no card; paid plans are on the pricing page.