In real estate, captions carry the narration, the address, price, beds and baths and the call to action for people watching with the sound off. That's a lot of people.
On social media, videos often autoplay muted, and many viewers never turn the sound on. Without captions, a narrated listing tour is just pictures with no explanation.
Types of captions
- Open captions are burned into the video and always visible. They're the norm for social reels because they look the same in every app.
- Closed captions are a separate text track viewers can turn on or off. They're the standard on YouTube and for accessibility.
- Auto captions are generated by speech recognition. They're fast, but they need proofreading, especially for street names, prices and unusual names.
Why captions help beyond muted viewing
- Accessibility for viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing.
- Better understanding, especially with accents or background music.
- Search: transcripts and captions give search engines and AI tools text they can understand.
Best practices
- Keep lines short and timed to the speech.
- Use high-contrast text that's easy to read on a phone.
- Keep captions away from the bottom edge, where platform buttons sit.
- Proofread every auto caption.
- Check whether your MLS has rules about text in videos.