Words and phrases to avoid in listing videos and captions

Avoid any phrase that describes who should live in the home instead of the home itself: buyer-profiling lines like 'perfect for families' or 'ideal for young professionals', steering proxies like 'safe neighborhood' and 'great schools', and coded words like 'exclusive community'. The Fair Housing Act's advertising provision (42 U.S.C. §3604(c)) covers any notice or statement indicating a preference — and a reel voiceover, on-screen text, and caption are all statements. The fix is mechanical: describe beds, baths, features and facts, never the people.

Every phrase on this page is here because it describes a person — who the home is for, who lives nearby, who would feel at ease — rather than a property. That is the whole test. The Fair Housing Act’s advertising provision makes it unlawful to publish any notice, statement or advertisement that indicates a preference or limitation based on race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, or national origin, and HUD enforces it across every medium you post to.

This list is not generic compliance boilerplate: it is the actual rule set behind our free fair housing checker — patterns drawn from HUD advertising guidance and the word lists circulated by the National Association of Realtors and brokerage compliance teams. Two severities matter:

• Flagged — language the guidance treats as discriminatory advertising outright. Cut it.
• Caution — context-dependent: usually fine describing the property, risky the moment it describes the people who should live there.

Familial status and buyer profiling

The most-violated category in captions, because these phrases feel like harmless enthusiasm.

Don’t write	Why	Write instead
“Perfect for families” / “family-friendly”	Tells childless households the home is not for them — familial status is a protected class.	“Four bedrooms, fenced backyard, cul-de-sac street”
“Ideal for young professionals” / “great for couples”	Advertises who the home is “for”, not what it is.	“Ten minutes to downtown, lock-and-leave condo”
“Empty nesters” / “adults only” / “no kids”	Targets or excludes by family status directly.	“Single-level living, low-maintenance lot”
“Bachelor pad”	Sex and marital-status targeting in one phrase.	“Compact one-bedroom with a great entertaining space”
“Starter home”	Caution — widely tolerated as a price-band description, but some brokerages ban it as buyer profiling.	“Competitively priced two-bedroom”

Steering proxies: safety, schools, desirability

These describe the neighborhood’s people by implication, which is why enforcement treats them as steering even when they sound like facts.

Don’t write	Why	Write instead
“Safe neighborhood” / “low crime”	Safety claims function as racial steering proxies in enforcement and testing — and are unverifiable promises.	Name a concrete amenity: “gated entry”, “patrolled HOA”
“Great schools” / “top-rated school district”	Caution — school quality claims steer; the district name is a fact.	“Within the Maple Grove school district”
“Desirable area” / “right side of town”	A judgment about which people made the area desirable.	Name what’s nearby: parks, transit, restaurants
“Up-and-coming neighborhood”	Caution — reads as a gentrification signal in compliance reviews.	“Near the new Riverfront development”

Religion, race, and national origin

Don’t write	Why	Write instead
“Walking distance to the church”	Caution — naming a religious landmark as an amenity signals which faith the listing is “for”.	Use a neutral landmark or the neighborhood name
Any “…community” described by faith or ethnicity	The textbook advertising violation, whatever the intent.	Describe architecture, amenities, geography
“Exclusive community”	Caution — “exclusive” reads as “excluding” applied to communities; fine for “exclusive listing agreement”.	“Private”, “gated”, or name the restricted-access amenity
“Traditional neighborhood”	Caution — a known code-word pattern when applied to who lives there; “traditional craftsman architecture” is fine.	Attach it to the houses, not the residents

Disability, sex, and income source

Don’t write	Why	Write instead
“Not suitable for wheelchairs” / “able-bodied”	Excludes buyers by disability; states requirements about people.	“Third-floor walk-up, no elevator” — the physical facts
“Must be able to climb stairs”	An ability requirement dressed as a description.	“Bedrooms are on the second floor”
“Walking distance”	Caution — describes distance in terms of ability; widely used, easy to avoid.	“A quarter-mile from” / “five minutes from”
“Female tenants only” and similar	Sex targeting; the narrow shared-living exemption does not apply to sale listings.	Remove it
“No Section 8” / “no vouchers”	Source-of-income is protected in a growing list of states and cities.	Remove it; screen applications lawfully instead

Video makes this harder, not easier

A caption gets one read-through before posting. A reel carries the same legal weight in four places at once: the voiceover script, the on-screen text, the caption, and the hashtags. Agents who would never type “perfect for a young family” say it out loud in a walkthrough voiceover without noticing. Treat every word that reaches the viewer — spoken or rendered — as advertising copy, because the statute does.

The two-second version of this whole page: sell the house, not the household. When you catch yourself describing a person, find the feature that made you think of them and write that instead. And before anything posts, paste the script and caption into the checker — it runs these exact rules and suggests the fix for each hit.

Common questions