By Rui Xu, Founder of MyHomeScout
Short answer: In NAR's 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 46% of buyers started by looking at listings online, 52% found the home they bought online, and 81% called photos "very useful". In California, 16.9 million people age 5 and older speak a language other than English at home, 1.33 million of them Chinese. A good bilingual kit gives you every piece one listing needs (story, nearby page, posters, description, posts) in English and Chinese, built from one set of facts, for less than one listing's translation bill. Since January 1, 2026 it also has to handle California's altered-photo law. Judge tools on those three things, not on how pretty one paragraph reads.
I build MyHomeScout, whose Marketing Studio is one of the tools this guide covers. NAR, Census and vendor figures come from their own publications, checked November 2026.
What buyers look at, and what agents actually send
NAR surveyed buyers who purchased between July 2024 and June 2025. Two of its tables tell you what a listing kit is for.
What buyers found "very useful" on listing websites:
Feature — Share of buyers
Photos — 81%
Detailed property information — 77%
Floor plans — 57%
Agent contact information — 44%
Virtual tours — 38%
How agents marketed the homes of sellers who used one:
Channel — Share of sellers
MLS website — 85%
Yard sign — 67%
Open house — 59%
Realtor.com — 50%
Agent's own website — 49%
Social media — 23%
Virtual tours — 20%
Video hosting sites — 5%
The gap is the opportunity. Buyers live on photos and detail, and 70% of them search on a phone or tablet. Yet fewer than one in four sellers saw their home on social media, and one in twenty on video. Sellers notice: when NAR asked what they most wanted from their agent, the top answer was "help market the home to potential buyers" (23%), ahead of pricing (19%).
Speed matters too. The typical home sold in NAR's survey spent a median of 4 weeks on the market, and buyers searched for a median of 10 weeks. If your Chinese version goes out on day 10, you have already missed a third of the listing's life.
The five pieces of a complete kit
Piece — What it does for the reader — What you check before it goes out
Listing story — Walks a buyer through the home on a phone: your photos first, then the location — Photo order, every fact, your contact line
Nearby page — Shows what is around the address — Distances, sources and dates
Posters and share cards — Gets the home seen in a feed or chat — Address, open-house time, image rights, legibility on a small screen
Listing description — Goes into the MLS and portals — Every claim, line by line, and the MLS's own rules
Posts — Ready-to-send text for WeChat, text messages, Google Business — Tone, the link, and that it matches the story
Every piece should exist in English and Chinese, and both should come from one fact sheet: beds, baths, square footage, lot size, year built, HOA, open-house times. When the open house moves from Saturday to Sunday, you change it once.
What it costs to do this the usual way
Here is what the pieces cost when you buy them separately, from prices the vendors publish themselves:
Item — Published price — Source
Listing photographer — $279 for a 2-hour shoot, plus a 15% service fee at checkout — Snappr real estate pricing
Professional English to Simplified Chinese translation — $0.08 per word ($0.11 for Traditional Chinese) — GTS Translation
Translating a 1,500-word kit (description, story text, posts) — $120 Simplified, $165 Traditional, per listing — Calculated from the GTS rates
Marketing Studio — $49/month, 7-day trial with no card — MyHomeScout pricing
Photography is not optional, and no software replaces it. You still need good photos; the question is what happens to them next. Translation is where a tool changes the math. Two listings a month with a 1,500-word kit each is $240 a month at $0.08 a word, before anyone designs a poster. A bilingual tool that drafts both languages from the same facts costs less than one listing's translation, as long as you read every line before it goes out.
A test you can run in one evening
Take a listing you are authorized to market, a fact sheet you have checked, and the seller-approved photos. Run it through each tool you are considering and score the results on your own phone.
- Change one fact. Move the open house by a day. Count how many pieces you had to edit by hand, in each language. The right answer is one edit.
- Read the Chinese as a buyer would. Does it sound like a Chinese-speaking agent wrote it, or like a translation? Are the numbers identical to the English? Watch square feet (平方英尺) and lot size, and keep "HOA" and "escrow" in the form your clients actually use.
- Look for invented facts. A good tool will not write "renovated kitchen", "top-rated schools" or "10 minutes to downtown" unless your fact sheet says so. Strike every claim you cannot source.
- Send it to yourself. Open the link the way a buyer would: in WeChat, in a text message, on a slow connection. If the first screen is not a photo of the home, start over.
- Check the seller report. Can you show the seller what went out and how often it was opened, without dressing up views as offers? A view count is a view count.
Keep the same listing text for every audience. Translate it; do not write different promises for different buyers.
Altered photos: what California requires since January 1, 2026
AB 723 added Business and Professions Code section 10140.8, in force since January 1, 2026. It applies to a broker or salesperson, or anyone acting on their behalf, who uses a digitally altered image in an ad or promotional material for selling real property. The law requires:
- A statement that the image is altered, "reasonably conspicuous" and on or next to the image.
- Access to the original. The statement must say the unaltered image can be seen at a link, URL or QR code to a publicly accessible website that includes and clearly identifies the original.
- Originals on your own site. If the ad is on a website you control, it must include the unaltered image or a link to it.
What counts as altered: adding, removing or changing elements with editing software or AI. The statute lists furniture, fixtures, appliances, flooring, walls, paint color, landscaping, the facade and floor plans. It also covers things around the home, such as streetlights, utility poles, the view from a window and neighboring properties. Virtual staging is the obvious case.
What does not count: changes to lighting, sharpening, white balance, color correction, angle, straightening, cropping or exposure, as long as they do not change how the property is represented.
Your MLS may add its own rules. CRMLS, for example, wants the original placed immediately before or after the altered photo and a label such as "virtually staged" in the photo description. It fines $250 if a warning is not acted on in time.
And the tool does not carry the responsibility for you. The California DRE's March 17, 2026 advisory on AI says responsibility "rests with the licensee and their responsible broker, not the technology provider."
What to ask a vendor: Can I mark a photo as altered and attach its original? Does every piece that uses that photo show the label and link to the original, including posters and share cards? In MyHomeScout's listing story, you mark each altered photo and upload the original; the story labels the photo and links to the original. The tool does not detect edits on its own, so marking stays your job.
How Marketing Studio fits
Marketing Studio starts from the address. You get a listing story, a nearby page, posters and share cards from your own photos, a listing description draft and ready-to-send posts. Each piece comes in English and Chinese with your license line, and all of them come from the same facts. You send them to WeChat, text or Google Business. Each listing shows how often it was opened, and you can send the seller a receipt of what went out. For buyers, you can put 2 to 5 homes side by side in one private link.
It is $49 a month, with a 7-day trial that needs no credit card. If you take three or more listings a year and market to Chinese-speaking buyers, run the evening test above on your next listing and compare the result with what you would have paid for translation alone.
What this does not replace
A kit does not replace your photographer, the seller's approval of what is published, or your MLS's rules. It drafts; you check every fact and sign off on every piece.
Start the 7-day Marketing Studio trial on your next listing, or compare plans. Screening an address rather than marketing one? See NeighborhoodScout vs MyHomeScout.
Sources (checked November 2026): NAR 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers (Exhibits 3-1, 3-2, 3-5, 3-6, 3-8, 6-20, 7-6 and 7-8; hosted by Rhode Island REALTORS); USAFacts: languages spoken at home in California (Census ACS, 2024); Snappr real estate photography pricing; GTS Chinese translation rates; Bus. & Prof. Code 10140.8; CRMLS digitally altered images FAQ; California DRE advisory on AI, March 17, 2026; MyHomeScout pricing.
Disclaimer：This article is for general information only and is not legal, tax, insurance, or other professional advice. Confirm official records and consult the appropriate professional before you decide.