Realtor: need advice

[Franck]

Hi,
I'm doing sometime this kind of pictures and I'm fully agree with goodguy on the way to proceed.

Other point: take attention on what you want sell, in your first picture, a tree is making your photo unreadable.

If you want sell the house, put the house as the key subject and not the tree .

 

[dennybeall]

Think about the process many of todays home buyers follow. They go on the internet, enter some basic info (3 bedrooms - 2 baths - 2 car garage, etc.) under $250K and up pops a list of houses with usually the one photo. That one photo either grabs them or not. If it does they will go on and look at the other photos of that property. If those hold them they will keep looking. If not they move on. Will your photos hold them or send them on?????? Many of the other people are using cellphones.

 

[PersistentNomad]

Photos don't sell houses. Photos just need to grab interest so people will come see the house.

As someone looking to buy a house, I wholeheartedly disagree. I don't even look at listings that don't have photos. It means there is something to hide. And bad photos can make an otherwise great home look like it needs work. Especially when there are a lot of homes in the area, I'm more likely to save the listings of homes that have many great photos that really illustrate that THIS home has value and deserves to be seen in person, not just that it could be interesting and maybe I should spend half an afternoon on it. I basically need to already be sold on it and imagining my future before I can spend my time in person on it. Photos will do that.

Additionally, you may not have to go the professional route and sink a zillion bucks into it. Students actually do great work and if you reach out to a local community college or university about students in their photo program, they will be happy to recommend students that they think would do a great job. I've used students for a whole mess of projects in my career, and I'm always very pleased with the results I get for the value.

 

[chuasam]

Most of the realtors where I live hire staging companies and then hire a specialist photographer to do the photos.

 

[deeky]

Yes, photos result in faster sales. Many older sellers who have been in their current homes for a long time are quite frustrated at how few showings they are getting. But in reality, they are getting more than they would in person. Your photos are your first showing. It's not just good photos, but intentional photos that are presented in an intentional order or logic.

Second, before you go too crazy with your editing, double check with your local MLS. Ours specifically forbids most editing of photos. I know, I know. Even quick jpegs are edited in camera, but doing too much to color, distortion correction, or editing backgrounds could land you in trouble. Is something like distortion correction that big of a deal to photographers? Not really. But most people on your MLS board are not photographers and may just not get it.

We generally like rules to be black and white, but as I teach in my real estate ethics course, life usually happens in the gray area in between. Just think through where you want your photos to be and what personality you want for your business. Then make sure it's ok with your broker.

BTW - As a photographer and recovering Realtor myself, if my agent put up a photo like your second, blurry and grainy image, we would have a pretty frank discussion and it would either be redone or I would have another Realtor taking photos of my home. To me, it makes that big of a difference.

 

[Storx]

Well today my new batteries came in for my old EOS 20D, so i let them charge up and i took it down the water and took a few photo's. I don't remember very many of the functions on this camera anymore.. but just in Auto (Green square) mode i took this picture.. what do you guys think... is the quality still decent or is it underperforming?

 

[dennybeall]

It's difficult to respond without detailed information on the settings used to take the particular photo. I can make blurry photos with a Hasselblad if I set it wrong.
Like the kitchen photo in your original post which was blurry and the window was blown completely out, we can't say if it was the camera or the settings or the holding of the camera.