Write an Amazing Real Estate Bio (with Examples)

I review real estate agent bios regularly. Below, I’ve teased out 6 principles that make the best bios stand out. You can use these ideas to craft your amazing bio.

Your real estate bio is not your resume.
It’s your sales page!

If someone is considering working with you, at some point they’ll do a Google search for you. They want to like you. They’re yours to lose.

Whether your bio is on Realtor.com, Zillow, your personal or company website, or a dozen other locations where you could pop up, you need to control the story.

You need to sell them on working with you!

Don’t treat your bio as a throw-away fill-in-the-blanks exercise where you state a few credentials and say that you’re here to help buyers and sellers. That’s a weak bio and sounds like everyone else. Instead, offer an amazing bio that brags about your key credentials, tells a story, and gives them a sense of working with you. Let’s dive in.

7 ways to make your real estate bio say wow!

Browse through these seven sections to get a crash course in how to write your bio:

1. Use features, benefits, advantages
2. Show your unique service proposition (USP) in story form
3. Show your lifestyle in story form (and your team)
4. Use formatting to break up your text
5. Provide credentials
6. Be clear, be brief, be bold
7. Example real estate bio – before and after

1 — Use Features, Benefits, and Advantages

Features are what you do. Benefits are how your features serve them. Advantages are how someone can use the benefits. Here’s a quick non-real estate example in car sales:

• Feature: Leather seats
• Benefit: Easy to clean
• Advantage: You can wipe up your kid’s spills quickly without them soaking into the seats and leaving a stain.

Now let’s see that with a real estate example:

• Feature: I have an amazing TC who communicates every day with you.
• Benefit: You’ll always know what’s going on.
• Advantage: You’ll feel confident about making plans to move, knowing that things are progressing smoothly.
  • Alterative Advantage: You’ll feel less stress and can focus on enjoying your move.
  • Alternative Advantage: You’ll be able to get clarification on any step of the process whenever you need it.

2 — Show Your Unique Service Proposition (USP) in Story Form

Start with one thing that stands out about your approach to real estate, or something that makes you especially good at real estate. Then go into depth about that, and end on how that helps them. Remember, people hire people they like, so show personality in your story! Keep it short, ideally under 75 words.

USP Example 1: The Well-Connected Realtor (72 words)

In 25 years, I’ve guided over 1,500 deals to closing. I’ve done so by gaining the trust of a vast array of partners needed to get through a transaction. I can call on anyone instantly to get something done and that makes a huge difference! I work with the best inspectors, cleaners, contractors, and more. You’ll have an army of people helping you, not just a fun Realtor who loves his work.

USP Example 2: The Picky Realtor (60 words)

You know those super-detail-oriented people who have a place for everything? They’re color-coordinated, never miss a birthday, and bullet-journal their life goals? That’s me. I guarantee the sale of your house will be well-organized and run like clockwork, from marketing to closing. You’ll be able to focus on packing and moving, while I do what I do best…manage the details.

3 — Show Your Lifestyle in Story Form (and Your Team)

Associate yourself with the community you serve. Make a list of a few specific places you patronize in the community.

• If you have a geographic farm, mention a store or bar you like in the neighborhood. Our local grocer, Windmill Farms, keeps us in fresh organic produce!
• If you serve the whole city, list a park, store, or other feature in different areas of the city, or an iconic landmark. We love hiking around the lighthouse at Point Loma in San Diego!
• If you sell rural property, talk about a well-known feature or character. We like taking visitors to Jerry’s Goat Farm for fresh goat milk and cheese. It doesn’t matter if they don’t know Jerry’s Goat Farm. It’s the local flavor you’re giving them that matters.

Include your team. Brag about them. Mention an event. If you can add photos to your bio, add one or two of the the team doing something together.

4 — Use Formatting to Break Up Your Text

I see many decent bios that fail to inform because they’re formatted poorly. Use headers and paragraph spacing to break up long, monotonous blocks of text. Use color, bold, and italics to draw the eye to important details.

Page design matters! If you don’t believe me, read this report: www.sweor.com/firstimpressions. You’ll never look at web pages the same way again.

5 — Provide Credentials

Do not provide an endless list of credentials ad nauseam. Just use the most relevant to your story and target market.

6 — Be clear, be brief, be bold

In 1918, William Strunk Jr. wrote a tiny book on the basic rules of English writing. In 1959, EB White revised the book and published it as “Elements of Style.” Time magazine calls it one of the 100 most influential books written in English.”

I’m telling you this because I had to do a book report on that book as part of my journalism classes in college. The main thing I took away was Strunk’s timeless advice: “Be clear, be brief, be bold.”

What that means for your real estate bio is:

• Keep your bio under 250 words.
• Omit needless words. Don’t say “I guarantee that I’m the top agent in my office.” Say “I’m the top agent in my office.”
• Use the active voice. Don’t say “I’m required to update my license…” Say, “I update my license…”
• Be certain. Don’t say “I might be able to find you the home of your dreams.” Say “I’ll find you the home of your dreams.”
• Avoid adverbs unless they pack a punch. Don’t say “It’s really beautiful.” Just say “It’s beautiful.” But do say “It’s beautifully built.” Beautifully packs a punch; really doesn’t.
• Write in an authentic voice, using first and second person pronouns. Use I, us, you, and we. You may have heard that you should write professional profiles in the third person: “Mary has 30 years in the real estate business, and she brings…” But that is outdated advice. Instead, say “I have 30 years in real estate, and I bring…”

Ready to write your bio? Before you start, have a look at the full real estate bio example below. Then you’ll see a summary of this article you can follow as you write your bio.

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Example real estate bio – before and after

Before (actual bio with all the names and places changed)

Jack Smith is a dream catcher. He helps new friends catch their dreams of buying and selling a wonderful home. A resident of Pittsburgh for more than 25 years, he has lived and worked in many areas in the Three Rivers area. His business is based on more than 80 percent referrals from satisfied clients. Most important to Jack is providing the most excellent service to buyers and sellers in order to earn their trust, referrals, and repeat business. Jack has sold homes in all price ranges from starter homes and high-dollar estate properties to uptown condominiums, ranch properties, and investment properties. Clients appreciate his flexibility, low pressure sales, patience, ability to listen and hear what a client wants, negotiation and analytic skills, and his ability to accurately price and market a home.

• What I like: It’s short (133 words). It contains all the important resume hot-buttons. It gives a flavor of who Jack is.
• What I don’t like: It’s densely packed with factoids, not personality. Jack doesn’t look a lot different than a dozen other Pittsburgh Realtors who profess similar credentials and attributes. It could be anyone because it lacks specific details. It’s also laid out as a single block of text, with no sub-headings, which won’t read well on mobile. Let’s see how it could be re-written, below.

After (re-written using guidelines in this article)

Hi, I’m Jack Smith. I’m a Pittsburgh native who loves selling homes all over our Three Rivers townships, neighborhoods, and boroughs. When I’m not working, you can find me having a beer at Hemingway’s or sitting left field at Three Rivers Stadium (AKA Heinz Field), watching the Steelers trounce the Browns.

Best of Both Worlds

My wife, Becky, joins me in in my work. As my sharp-eyed transaction coordinator, she makes us look good by handling the real estate paperwork 100% to perfection. Once you find a house you love, or get an offer on your house for sale, you can relax knowing Becky’s taking care of the details with the attention of a mother bear on her cubs.

Nothing Surprises Me Anymore

With over 20 years of real estate under my belt, plus an alphabet soup of credentials (GRI, EPro, ABR, CCIM, GCFI—just kidding, that last one’s an electrical outlet), you can believe I have an answer for every problem that can crop up. Nothing surprises me—not a bee swarm in the attic, a seller who passes away the day of closing, an unexpected fence dispute by a neighbor, or any other of the many situations I’ve seen. Everything has a solution, and I’m the guy to find it for you. Call to start working with me. I mean it. No matter your real estate experience level, call me. I’m here for you.

• What I like: It’s still short (236 words). Anything under 300 words is perfect. It’s in the first person, and it shares favorite places and activities that give people a strong sense of Jack’s personality. It’s laid out using sub-headers to break up the text. It ends on a call to action. It includes Jack’s TC, his wife, as a huge benefit. And it brings in his credentials in a humorous fashion that reflects on his personality.

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How to Write Your Amazing Real Estate Bio

1. Work through principles 1-3 first, before you start writing the entire bio. That gives you some content to draw from when writing the bio.
2. Brainstorm your bio. Start long and whittle it down. If it feels too generic, add more concrete details and place names.
3. Review the bio to see if you’ve hit on all the key principles described in this post. Again, have someone else read it and help you add more “color” in place of generic descriptions.
4. Edit the bio. No one is a perfect writer. Allow someone else to give you feedback for content, grammar, punctuation, and formatting.

I’m sure you have all the knowledge, skill, and desire to be a great real estate agent. Now you just need to tell people by writing a great real estate bio!

Once you’re happy with your real estate bio, go through all your online profiles and update them…your Zillow, Realtor.com, personal website, Facebook profile, etc. Also be sure to Google your name to see how you look in online search and optimize your profiles across the internet. (See this post: It’s time to Google yourself (again).