The language of estate agency, findings in built and rural environment

Pryce, G. and Oates, S. (2008) The language of estate agency, findings in built and rural environment. Project Report. Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

Abstract

Have you ever thought about the language of estate agents? As recognizable and distinct as any regional accent or local dialect, there seems to be a universal idiom of house selling. “Des. Res.”, “rarely available”, “viewing essential” – these are all part of the peculiar parlance of housing advertisements which contain a heady mix of euphemism, hyperbole and superlative. Indeed, many of the jokes about estate agents rest on an accepted set of popular assumptions about their inimitable use of language. While this might sound like a trivial observation, it may well be that analysing the language of property selling might provide a new and rich means by which the nature and dynamics of housing markets could be explored, supplementing the more routine methods currently in use. The prospect of finding a new tool for analysing housing markets led Sarah Oates and Gwilym Pryce of the University of Glasgow to think about ways in which the idiom of selling could be analysed in a systematic way. Based on their analysis of a unique dataset of 49,926 records of real estate transactions in the Strathclyde conurbation over the period 1999 to 2006 categorised according to Aristotle’s theory of rhetoric, the researchers discovered that agents appear to be more inclined to use hyperbole when the market is buoyant than when it is flat which may reflect agents’ intuitive response to changes in the opportunity cost of viewing experienced by potential buyers. They also find a strong spatial pattern of language, giving weight to the theory that local conventions emerge that lead to persistent differences in the way dwellings are marketed in different sub-markets.

• Item Type: Research Reports or Papers (Project Report)
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Pryce, Professor Gwilym and Oates, Prof Sarah
• Authors: Pryce, G., and Oates, S.
• Subjects: H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Urban Studies
• Publisher: Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors