Listing-side work

The listing prep plan

Photos in, a ranked prep plan out: what to fix, what to skip, what to credit instead, with cost bands and the reasoning your seller can follow.

The idea

What this does

"What should we do before listing" is the first question every seller asks, and the answers they usually get are anecdotes. This prompt reads your photos of the home, sorts every candidate improvement by transformation-per-dollar, separates do-now from skip from credit-instead, sequences it against your target list date, and writes the seller-meeting version with the reasoning attached. Walk into the listing presentation with this and you are the agent with a plan, which is frequently the agent who gets the signature.

Gather these first

Before you start

Photos of the home as it stands, room by room, plus exterior (phone photos are fine; honest beats pretty)
The target list date and the seller's realistic budget and appetite for work
The price band and what buyers at that band expect in your market

Step by step

How to use it

Start a new chat named for the listing and attach the photos.
Copy the prompt, fill in the brackets, and paste.
Sanity-check the cost bands against your contractor instincts; adjust in the chat where your market knows better.
Ask for the seller-meeting one-pager and take it to the appointment.

Copy everything in the box

The prompt

Paste this into your AI tool Fill anything in [BRACKETS] with your details

You are a listing-prep strategist for me, a listing agent. I have attached photos of a home we will list around [TARGET DATE] in [CITY/METRO], likely price band [$X to $Y]. Seller's constraints: budget up to [$BUDGET], appetite for disruption [LOW/MEDIUM/HIGH], currently [OCCUPIED/VACANT]. Build the prep plan: 1. ROOM-BY-ROOM READ. What the photos show: condition, era, and the specific items a buyer at this price band will notice first. Label photo inferences as such. 2. THE RANKED LIST. Every candidate action (paint, floors, lighting, hardware, landscaping, deep clean, staging, and any repair the photos suggest), each with: cost RANGE for this metro, expected effect on how the home shows and competes at this band (reason it, do not invent a dollar return), disruption level, and time required. 3. THE SORT. Three buckets with reasoning: DO NOW (clears the transformation-per-dollar bar), SKIP (buyer at this band will not pay for it, or land value dominates), CREDIT INSTEAD (real issues better handled as disclosure and price than as a rushed fix). Note where a partial fix would look like concealment and should be avoided. 4. THE SEQUENCE. Work back from [TARGET DATE]: what starts when, what can run in parallel, where the photo shoot lands, and the single item most likely to blow the timeline. 5. CONTRACTOR ASKS, DRAFTED. A short scope note per DO NOW item I can send to contractors for quotes, specific enough to get comparable bids. 6. THE SELLER ONE-PAGER. A warm, plain summary for the seller meeting: the plan, the reasoning, the budget total as a range, and the honest sentence about what we are choosing not to do and why. Rules: ranges with confidence, never point returns ("adds $40k") without labeling it as the roughest of estimates. The ranking logic matters more than the absolute numbers; say so in the one-pager. If the photos suggest something serious (roof, drainage, foundation-adjacent), route it to "inspect before deciding," not to a cosmetic bucket.

→Anything in [BRACKETS] is yours to fill in. Delete a bracket line if it does not apply; the prompt still works.

The result

What you'll get back

A ranked, priced, sequenced plan instead of a shrug and a painter's number
The do/skip/credit sort with reasoning a seller can push on
Contractor scope notes that get you comparable bids fast
A seller one-pager that wins listing presentations

Level it up

Make it yours

Pair with playbook 14 to add the "here is how it will show" narrative per room, and with playbook 12 if records need cleaning up first.
After bids arrive, paste them in: "replace the cost bands with these real bids and re-rank."
Ask "what would we cut if the budget were half" before the seller asks you.

Keep it honest

Expected-lift reasoning is honest and rough; the ranking is the reliable part, and the one-pager says so on purpose.
Anything structural or safety-adjacent goes through an inspector or contractor before it goes in a plan.
The seller owns the choices; the plan's job is to make the trade-offs visible, not to spend their money.