Austin, TX real estate broker Stan Barron is no Ernest Hemingway, but the stories he writes are touching the hearts -- and the pocketbooks -- of those who hire him to sell their home in a tough market.

Each listing on Barron's website comes with Madison Avenue-style advertising in the form of a short-short story featuring the home for sale as protagonist.

Taking his cue from the likes of Ogilvy & Mather rather than Strunk & White, Barron's stories are thin on plot, they lack drama and characters don't grow, but his prose does wind up on at least one best seller's list -- the seller's.

In a region with one of the nation's worst housing slumps, high-end sellers appreciate all the help they can get and they have helped propel Barron to the top of the hot brokers' list.

Barron says, like other dot com bust regions, the Austin market has suffered years of decline and now there's a glut of homes on the market.

In the hot year 2000, there were approximately 3,500 homes for sale on the Austin market. Last year that figure was as high as 11,000 he says. Meanwhile the median price, after peaking at $180,000 to $190,000, has stagnated at about $140,000 to $150,000, according to Barron.

Barron, who has no shortage of sales, credits his story-telling talent for his success.

"In the real estate industry, I was trained to write really short ads with predictable phrasing and not give the price and the address," said Barron.

"What I learned from Madison Avenue was that any house is more expensive than the most expensive Mercedes Benz so why not give it a try? I view myself as an ad agency who just happens to advertise houses," Barron added.

Barron's stories still contain some of the difficult-to-unlearn flowery prose of real estate ads, but illustrated with photos of the home for sale and floor and site plans his stories aren't your typical newspaper ads. They include the good, the bad and the ugly.

"I make them interesting much in the way direct response advertising does. I give the prices, the address. Mercedes Benz does not apologize for the high price, but they use it to reinforce the image of status. If a house has a problem, I put in negative stuff. Why gloss over an objection the consumer will discover anyway? Ads that admit those things are very disarming and it adds to the credibility of the other stuff you are saying," he says.

Before Barron followed the family path to real estate in the late 1970s he worked in advertising and admits he's stolen ideas from one industry to generate success in another.

"In a story, people get a sense of what it would be like to live there if the story is more captivating than just a description of bedrooms and baths," he says.

Here are some samples of Barron's work:

Published: January 16, 2004

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A journalist for 35-years, Broderick Perkins parlayed an old-school daily newspaper career into a digital news service offering editorial content and consulting services. Perkins' San Jose, CA-based DeadlineNews Group includes the flagship news site, DeadlineNews.Com, offering real estate, personal finance and consumer journalism, and a backshop, the Deadline Newsroom.