About Selling Points
Selling Points explores property through the keywords and phrases used to describe it.
Most property websites begin with familiar filters such as location, price, bedrooms and property type.
Selling Points looks at something different: the language used to sell the property.
Estate agents mention the things they believe make a home attractive, distinctive or worth noticing. These might be physical features, brands, schools, railway stations, shops, restaurants, architectural terms, historical details, views, developers, employers or thousands of other ideas.
Selling Points turns those words and phrases into something that can be explored.
Property Keywords
Selling Points is building a Property Keyword Directory from the language used to describe homes.
More than 5,000 property keywords and keyphrases are already indexed, covering the features, qualities, places and ideas that help distinguish one property from another.
Traditional property search relies mainly on fixed filters. Selling Points adds another layer: the actual words estate agents use to explain why a property is worth noticing.
Each keyword can become a searchable Point, connected to properties and locations.
As property descriptions become richer and search becomes more personalised, keywords are becoming an increasingly important way to discover property.
Selling Points is designed to make that growing language searchable.
Explore Keywords by Location
Property keywords are local.
A feature, place, brand or local name may matter greatly in one area and hardly at all in another. Selling Points connects keywords with the places where they actually help define and sell property.
Choose any area on the map to continue into the Property Keyword Explorer and see what turns up there.
Selling Points is being developed in Surrey, which is why Surrey is currently used as the default county.
Property is local. Its keywords should be too.
Selling Points collects and organises these property keywords so that they can be searched, compared and connected with properties.
Within Selling Points, many of these organised keywords are called Points.
A Point is therefore not a mysterious new concept. It is simply a property keyword or idea that Selling Points has recognised and given a place within the system.
The Property Keyword Explorer
The Property Keyword Explorer lets you search current property descriptions using words and phrases that conventional property filters often ignore.
You can combine a keyword with location, tenure and property portal.
For example:
- natural light in Surrey
- barns in Devon
- Waitrose in Hampshire
- Quooker in Kent
- equestrian in Sussex
The keyword does not have to be an absolute requirement.
Sometimes it is simply a better way to explore the market.
The Property Description Explorer
Selling Points can also work in the opposite direction.
Instead of starting with a keyword and looking for properties, the Property Description Explorer starts with a property description and looks for the keywords hidden inside it.
Recognised Selling Points can be identified within the text.
But property descriptions constantly introduce new language.
If an interesting phrase has not yet been recognised, it can be selected directly with the mouse and investigated.
It might be:
- an architectural term
- a kitchen manufacturer
- a historic feature
- a local business
- a building material
- a designer
- a room type
- an unusual amenity
That discovery may eventually become another recognised property keyword within Selling Points.
So the system is not intended to be a finished dictionary.
It grows by discovering the language actually being used to sell property.
From Keywords to Keyphrases
One keyword can be useful.
Several keywords together begin to describe what someone really wants.
Selling Points calls these combinations Property Keyphrases.
A Keyphrase can bring together multiple ideas such as:
natural light + railway station + period property + Waitrose
or:
barn conversion + land + views + equestrian
This is much closer to the way people actually think about their ideal home than a conventional set of property filters.
Property Wants
The Property Wants List lets people collect the keywords and Points that matter to them.
Instead of repeatedly searching for one feature at a time, those individual ideas can begin to form a personal description of the property they are looking for.
A Property Wants List might include:
- architectural features
- particular rooms
- brands
- nearby shops
- schools
- transport
- landscape
- historical features
- leisure facilities
- local businesses
Over time, these Property Wants can form the basis of richer property searches and alerts.
The aim is simple:
describe the property you want using the same kind of language estate agents use to describe property.
Pointers
Every keyword search can reveal something.
Selling Points records these relationships as Pointers.
Pointers help show:
- which keywords produce properties
- where those properties are found
- how often particular searches occur
- where a keyword seems especially relevant
- where Selling Points needs to investigate further
A Point describes a keyword.
A Pointer describes a relationship being discovered between that keyword, a place and property.
Together, they help Selling Points gradually build a map of the language of property.
Taking Responsibility for a Keyword
Some property keywords represent real organisations, businesses, brands or places.
Estate agents may already be using their names to help market homes.
A school, supermarket, developer, architect, restaurant, employer or local attraction may discover that its name repeatedly appears in property descriptions.
Selling Points is developing a way for appropriate organisations to take responsibility for relevant keywords.
That could allow them to provide accurate information about themselves, explain why they matter within an area and connect people with an authoritative source.
This is not about attaching an unrelated advertisement to a property.
The relationship already exists because the keyword is already being used in the property description.
Selling Points makes that relationship visible.
A Project in Development
Selling Points is still very much in development.
It is being designed and built by one independent developer, with ChatGPT used extensively as a development partner for discussion, ideas, coding assistance, debugging, wording and exploring how the system itself should evolve.
That means the project changes quickly.
New keywords are added.
New relationships are discovered.
New tools are built as useful patterns emerge.
Some features are experimental. Some will change. Others may lead to entirely new ways of exploring property.
Selling Points is therefore not presented as a finished property portal.
It is an evolving attempt to answer a different question:
What can we learn if we treat the language used to sell property as searchable information in its own right?
From Descriptions to Property Wants
The overall idea can be viewed as a simple progression:
Property descriptions
→ Keywords
→ Points
→ Places
→ Property searches
→ Pointers
→ Keyphrases
→ Property Wants
Each stage adds a little more meaning.
And together they create a different way to discover property.
What makes a property unique?
A property does not have to contain one extraordinary feature to be unique.
Its identity may come from the combination of dozens of ordinary and unusual details.
That is the idea explored in more depth in:
Unique Property Selling Points →