Ask real estate agents what soundtrack sells a house, and you’ll get two answers. One is a carefully curated playlist, while the other is silence.
Inman asked agents and brokers from Manhattan to Breckenridge, Colorado, and they described the music they play at showings and open houses and how they match it to the property.
None could point to hard numbers showing a playlist moved a home faster or for more money. What they did offer was a clear set of rules from the agents who use music, and an equally firm argument from those who won’t touch it.
Softening distractions or masking them?
Ben Jacobs, co-founder of the Chestler Jacobs Team at Douglas Elliman in New York City, thinks music raises more questions than it answers. He said he’s not a fan of playing music during showings.
Ben Jacobs
“Buyers may wonder if the agent is trying to mask something, whether it’s street noise, construction nearby, sounds within the building or even a noisy appliance,” Jacobs told Inman. “You want buyers to experience the home as it actually is, without anything distracting from their ability to evaluate the space.”
His co-founder, Jessica Chestler, said music has its place. That place is just not a private showing.
“Music can be wonderful for setting a mood at a cocktail party, listing launch or special event, but during a showing, I think there’s something to be said for letting the property speak for itself,” Chestler said.
Megan Sullivan works at the same brokerage, and she uses music for the very reason Jacobs avoids it. Sullivan sells large estate homes across Fairfield and Westchester counties out of Douglas Elliman’s Greenwich, Connecticut, office. Some of those homes sit within earshot of things a seller can’t fix.
“I actually do like incorporating music into certain showings, particularly when a property is impacted by outside noise from planes, trains or automobiles,” Sullivan said. “Thoughtfully selected background music can help create a more welcoming atmosphere and soften those distractions, allowing buyers to focus on the overall experience of the home. I think it’s very property-specific.”
Jeffrey Hensel is a broker associate with North Coast Financial, a California hard money lender that funds fix-and-flip and probate deals. He looks at it from the investor side.
“Dead silence can amplify every creak, clank, and drip in an otherwise quiet home,” he said. “Background music masks these sounds and provides some white noise to help set a calm mood.”
Warming up a cold showing
Agents in the pro-music camp mostly aren’t trying to cover anything up. They simply want buyers to stay longer.
Sandra Daniels
Sandra Daniels of Harry Norman, Realtors | Forbes Global Properties serves the East Cobb and Marietta area outside Atlanta. She’s currently listing a $3.9 million estate in The River Club in Suwanee, Georgia.
For those showings, she rotates light classical piano, The Macarons Project and a Spotify playlist called “Nora Ephron + Nancy Meyers Dinner Party.”
“Put a buyer in a home with a glass of Champagne or a cup of coffee and the right music playing, and that cozy, inviting atmosphere encourages people to stay, relax and feel at home,” Daniels told Inman.
Daniels also has a low-tech trick for vacant listings she expects to sell in the first week. She bought an old-school CD player and a few classical CDs. She leaves it on repeat through the first weekend of showings and stops by each evening to turn off the lights and music and lock up.
Natalia Bassova, founder and CEO of Resort Real Estate in Breckenridge, Colorado, saw the same effect at a luxury mountain listing. The home looked great, she said, but it showed cold.
“By adding some background instrumental music, it gave the buyers more time to spend in the home. They spent more time in the kitchen and great room areas,” Bassova said. “The property didn’t change, but the atmosphere did.”
For mountain and luxury homes, Bassova plays acoustic and piano music, including Ludovico Einaudi and The Piano Guys. For condos and new construction, she switches to soft contemporary instrumentals.
No lyrics, please
Agents who play music disagree on genre, but almost all agree on one thing: avoid lyrics.
“If the buyer begins to think about the music, then it is having a negative impact,” Bassova said. Her never-play list covers anything with strong lyrics, politics, swearing or heavy bass.
Andrea Seeney
Andrea Seeney is a global real estate advisor with Atlanta Fine Homes Sotheby’s International Realty and a trained opera singer and classical pianist. She compared lyrics to a seller’s personal effects.
“Acoustic performances are best because they set a tone and allow the buyer to fill in the blanks with their own thoughts,” Seeney said.
She leans toward jazz and usually plays Spotify’s Coffee House radio or its Ella Fitzgerald playlist. She says music works on buyers through memory: a song can take someone back to a time and place they enjoyed, “and that memory then reflects positively on the home.”
Hensel takes the lyrics rule a step further, to genre itself. If an agent plays hip-hop or country for a buyer who doesn’t listen to it, he says, that signals an assumption about who the buyer is. That can create friction neither side notices. His pick is quiet cocktail-lounge jazz like Miles Davis or Bill Evans, at a steady tempo and volume.
He also cited retail research by psychological scientists Adrian North and Lorraine Sheridan of Curtin University and Charles Areni of Macquarie University. It found that shoppers who heard classical music rated merchandise as higher quality and were willing to spend more.
‘Are you a Swiftie?’
Some agents ignore the rulebook completely.
Rachel Kilmer
Rachel Kilmer, an agent with ReeceNichols Real Estate in Kansas City, Missouri, plays Taylor Swift at nearly every open house. She swaps in country for more rural listings.
“In Kansas City, she’s a conversation starter,” Kilmer said. “People come in, and it’s, ‘Are you a Swiftie?’ ‘No, but I love the Chiefs!’ It really helps loosen up the conversation.”
She added, “I’m the one sitting there listening to it for two hours!”
Monica Shea, a broker with KW Aspire in Colorado Springs, Colorado, builds whole open houses around a theme, and the music follows.
She played the Eras Tour set list at a Taylor Swift–themed open house and the Frozen soundtrack at a hot cocoa bar event. A Halloween open house got not-too-spooky Halloween music. For regular showings, she has sellers put on a YouTube channel with seasonal background music and scenery.
Shea’s never-play list puts her directly at odds with a few other agents: smooth jazz. Shea says she never plays “anything that sounds like the Weather Channel.”
Marcel Finkelstein of Team BlackStar at eXp Realty hosts open houses every Sunday across Monmouth County, New Jersey. He sees music as more of an icebreaker than a staging tool.
His Apple Music rotation includes lounge instrumentals, vocal-free dance-pop and Bon Entendeur. It also has Afro house from DJ Alex Niyazov and the warm trumpet and sax of Fausto Papetti and Paul Mauriat.
He uses the same approach whether the listing is a $600,000 two-bedroom condo in Manalapan or a $2 million six-bedroom in Colts Neck.
“I want the atmosphere to feel calm, comfortable and welcoming, rather than like a sales presentation,” Finkelstein said.
Finkelstein added that his Instagram followers also know how much he loves music.
“Every week, I share new songs and incorporate music into my stories and posts about homes,” he said. “It’s a personal interest that carries through into how I present properties.”
Let the home stand out, not the soundtrack
On setup, agents who play music give similar advice. Keep the volume low enough that buyers can ask questions and the agent can hear their feedback. Use one good speaker rather than several.
Bassova puts hers in the middle of the home, and Seeney puts a small Bluetooth speaker in the kitchen. When sellers have a Sonos system, Daniels connects to it from her MacBook or iPad. Otherwise, she brings her own Bose speaker.
Kilmer runs her music from an iPad instead of her phone. “That way, incoming calls and texts don’t interrupt the music,” she said.
As for proof, none of the agents Inman spoke with track music as a performance metric. Bassova said she gets buyer feedback that certain homes feel relaxing, but nothing tied to days on market or offers.
So the evidence is anecdotal, and the playlists don’t agree. Agents can’t even settle on jazz. Both camps share one goal: the buyer should notice the home, not the soundtrack.
As Bassova said, “If the buyer begins to think about the music, then it is having a negative impact.”
