And then it happens: Your real estate agent wafts in to take pictures of your property with her cellphone camera. (Cue “Taps”).
Predictably, the sky in your front exterior shot is white and your house is grey and shaded. The verticals are off and one-third of your house is missing. The few interior shots she took are narrow-angled and under-exposed. Naturally, all the windows are all blown-out (white) to match the sky.
Sadly, for your bottom- line, your realtor is marketing a gloomy house with views not worthy of imagery and dark, soulless interior shots of your furniture and not the space you are selling.
But if your agent is a part of a humongous network and it is the network that ‘really’ sells houses, does embarrassingly executed marketing really effect your bottom-line? You bet it does!
”90% of people start their home search online. . .” and they cull the list of the homes they would have seen if they left the search to their real estate agent by 50%. -California Association of Realtors
This is a stunning statistic and it means two things. One, that people are getting dragged around to a lot of listings they really don’t care to see by their agents (time management problem). And two, there must be some sort of criteria online that makes the home search far more efficient – a criteria that culls the “must see” list by 50%.
“The most important criteria online for potential homebuyers are the number of photographs. . “ and, of course, the quality of those images. -Realtor.com
Your odds of a successful sale increase exponentially with each crisp, clear, beautiful photograph included in your online advertising. If your agent doesn’t think your home deserves professional photographs, what else isn’t your agent doing to effectively market your property?
To see some great real estate photography jump to Flickr here