Ever heard the phrase, “A picture is worth a thousand words?” Well, in real estate, it’s worth thousands of dollars for both you and your seller.
Photos (good ones that is) are one of the easiest things you can do to market your listing. In fact, 98% of homebuyers who searched for a home on the Internet found photos to be among the most useful features of Realtor websites, according to the 2008 NAR Profile of Home Buyers & Sellers.
Anyone, who knows me very well, knows how strongly I feel about having lots of high quality photos for listings. In fact, I (and several of my friends) refer to myself as the ‘Photo Police’.
One really good photo doesn’t cut it. And several really bad photos don’t do the job either. You need as many good photos as your multiple listing service will allow. You may even want to consider hiring a photographer to take photos. Check out the tips below for taking better listing photos:
• Take photos at the right time of day, when the sun is facing the front of the home. If the home is in the shadows in the afternoon, try coming in the morning to take the photo, and vise versa. Do not take a photo on a rainy or cloudy day unless absolutely necessary.
• Close garage doors. Close the front door.
• Remove debris, hoses, cords, garbage cans, etc. from the yard.
• If a car is in the driveway or parked in front of the home, ask the car owner to move it before taking the photo.
• Move permit signs or extra signs out of the shot.
• Try to take photos when the landscaping is tidy (i.e., recently mowed, no weeds, new colorful flowers).
• Set your camera on the highest quality setting. The photos will be very large, but higher quality is what you need for printing. To change camera settings, look for references to quality, resolution, pixels or star symbols.
Tips for taking better exterior photos
• Make sure the entire house is in the photo. Leave at least two or three feet of wiggle room on each side in the shot.
• Don’t take the photo from too far away or too close up.
• Line up the shot so the house is not crooked or at an angle. It’s always better to go by the roof line of the home. If roof line is perfectly horizontal, then the photo will probably be straight.
• If the house is on a hill, try to get some height to get better shots (maybe use a ladder).
• Center the house in the photo. You don’t want too much sky or too much grass in the shot.
• Take photos from several angles. The best shots are usually directly in front of the house, but sometimes you can get better shots a few “baby” steps to the left or right of the center of the house.
• Minimize the driveway and maximize the lawn. If the driveway is on the right of the home, it’s better to take the photo from the left side of the home.
• Review photos on your camera immediately after taking them so you can see if the shots came out the way you expected, and you can retake it right then if needed.
Tips for taking better interior photos
• Turn on all lights. (i.e., lamps, pendants, cans, overhead, etc.)
• Open blinds, but don’t pull blinds to top of window.
• Take photos from several angles in room. It‘s usually best to take photos from a corner or the doorway to make the room look as big as possible.
• Don’t get too much of the ceiling in the shot. Remember you want more of the room. You want the best possible angle (not the corner).
• Try unique angles. Maybe at the top of stairs if it’s a two-story family room.
• To get a better shot of the kitchen, stand on chair so you can shoot over the breakfast bar and get more of room.
• Try to shoot multiple rooms at once. For example, photograph the kitchen and keeping room together as well as separate. This shows buyers that the space is open.
• Keep special features in mind, so you can get them in the shot. For example, coffered ceilings, built-in bookcases, arched entries, fireplaces, pools, water features, etc.
My lists could go on and on, but I’ll let you add your own tips in the comments section so others can benefit. Hopefully, there are a few more people out there who are as passionate (or nuts) about photos as I am.
Tags: atlanta real estate, better photos, listing photos, Metro Brokers, NAR, Tips, Tisha Gay
June 23, 2009 at 7:38 am
I am always completely dumbfounded and puzzled when I am searching listings and I come across one where ALL the pictures are fuzzy… did that agent even look at the photos before loading them into the MLS systems? When looking for properties I feel my buyer clients may be interested in, I will skip right over something with poor quality pictures, regardless of how glowing the descriptive may be. Inventory is so high that agents don’t have to show these poorly presented properties. I also always send my sellers a link to their listings – I want them to see the pictures I have posted and give me feedback if they feel strongly about the content of one of them.
June 23, 2009 at 3:34 pm
I preach this to my agents about the pictures.
June 23, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Thanks Tisha. These tips are invaluable. It is all in the pictures because they represent the first impression the prospective buyer sees when they receive the e-mail from their agent of possible homes they may want to see. If they don’t like the pictures they move on to the next listing. As far as a tip, I recently heard at a class that we should not include mirrors in pictures.
Thanks again for sharing.
June 25, 2009 at 3:57 pm
This is one of my BIGGEST pet peeves – bad listing photos. My favorites are the blurry photos that look like they are taken from a moving car.
“OK. The house is coming up on my left, so I’ll slow down to about 45mph… have to time this just right… and… got it! Perfect! Woah! Didn’t see that trashcan in the road there, whoops. Now, back to Starbucks for another Frappacino!”
Just a little more time spent on listing photos could cut off months of time on the market.
Also, take a TON of photos. Don’t just take one photo of every room in the house, one of the exterior, and settle with what you have. Take a bunch from every angle. Just because they look good on the small screen on your digital camera doesn’t mean that they are going to look great once you get home and load them on the computer.
And if you can’t get a good photo the first time out, take another trip to the listing! You are going to be out there anyways dropping off listing flyers or something so take more. And the season changes… oy!!! There is no other sure fire way to tell that a house has been on the market for a while than a photo of a home in winter where there isn’t a single leaf on a tree and the yard is a putrid shade of yellow. Take new ones already!
OK. I think I got that all out of my system… wooh!