The listing text that brings enquiries

Make, model, year, mileage, gearbox, fuel and price sit in fields, and those are what people filter on. Repeating them in the text achieves nothing — they are already there, and the reader took them in before clicking. The text has a different job: it answers the questions no field covers.

Those questions are always the same, whatever the car: how was it driven? Why is it being sold? What was done to it most recently? What is not right? What falls due at the next service or test? A text that answers those five gets enquiries from people who already intend to buy.

The second measure is what it does for you. Every piece of information in the text is one less question in the message thread and one less argument at the viewing. A long, honest text brings fewer enquiries than a short, vague one — but they are the enquiries that turn into a sale.

The first line shows up in previews and helps decide whether anyone reads on. So it should carry whatever sets your car apart from the twenty others of the same model — not a greeting and not the model name, which is already in the headline.

Useful first lines are concrete: “Second owner, mine since 2018, serviced at the same workshop throughout, latest invoice from March included.” Or: “Cambelt, water pump and front brakes renewed 8,000 kilometres ago, invoices available.” Either says more about the car in one sentence than a paragraph of praise.

A listing text is not read from top to bottom but skimmed, in descending order of interest. So the most important thing goes at the top and the decorative at the bottom, and paragraphs with one topic each work better than a single block.

The order below works for almost any car, because it matches the order in which a buyer asks his questions. It can be worked through without any writing flair: two sentences on each point gives you a complete text with no gap that has to be filled in by message later.

Many buyers are not looking for a model but for a feature: tow bar, four-wheel drive, auxiliary heater, automatic, seven seats, sunroof, an estate with a long load bay. Spell those terms out in the text and you get found by people searching for exactly them — even where no filter field exists.

The same goes for the names specialists use: the engine designation, the gearbox type, the chassis code, the generation. Someone looking for a particular unit because they know its quirks searches for its code, not for “well-kept family car”.

The limit is clear: write what is fitted. A term in the text the car does not live up to brings enquiries from people who leave disappointed — and it may well count as a statement about condition you have to stand behind in a dispute.

Faults belong in the text, for two reasons: they will come out at the viewing anyway, and whatever you name in the listing costs you nothing there. A scratch the buyer finds himself is a bargaining chip; a scratch that was in the listing is a property of the car.

The wording decides the effect. What works is the description, plus the assessment, plus where possible the order of magnitude of the fix: “Driver's door has a scratch about 20 centimetres long, down to the primer, visible in the photos. A paint shop estimated a low three-figure sum to put it right.” That settles the point.

What does not work are softeners. “Minor signs of use”, “normal for the age”, “nothing serious” mean something different to every reader and produce exactly the disappointment they are meant to avoid. If you cannot judge the size, photograph it and write underneath what you see.

A good part of what appears in listings either does harm or does nothing. The following belong to the first group, and each has a reason that has nothing to do with style.

The second group is everything that would be true of any car: “reliable”, “economical”, “plenty of room”, “perfect for a family”. Such sentences appear in every second listing and distinguish yours from none. The space they take up is missing where you could have written when the brakes were done.

What appears in the listing does not disappear with the sale. Statements about condition — no accidents, mileage, number of owners, servicing — become part of what the buyer was entitled to rely on, and they are not covered by the warranty exclusion in the contract. That holds in Switzerland as in Germany.

That does not mean saying nothing; it means being precise. Instead of “no accidents”, write what you know and how: “No accidents during my ownership since 2019; I have no information about the period before that.” That is information, not a retreat, and it reads more credibly than the absolute word.

In practice that also means: what is in the listing goes into the contract later, word for word. A text from which the contract's list of defects can be copied straight across is a text that has done its job.

The last paragraph says what happens next. When you can be reached, how a viewing works, whether the car is registered and can be test-driven, and that you will send more photos or the chassis number on request. That lowers the barrier to writing at all — and that is where most listings fail.

If no enquiry arrives after two weeks, it is almost never the text alone. Check the price first against cars that have actually sold, then the photos, then the fields — a wrongly ticked equipment box or a missing engine variant takes you out of results lists you belong in.

And if enquiries come but nobody turns up to view, the text is too vague. Then it is missing the details someone needs to justify a journey to you — and those are further up this piece, in the same order people read them.