Pictures: Your Agent is Doing it Wrong

I have been brewing up a rant for a while now about something that is at the top of my list of professional pet peeves: terrible pictures of listings. It is bordering on an epidemic and I honestly can’t take it anymore. The time has come to say what few have the guts to say. YOUR AGENT IS TERRIBLE AT TAKING PICTURES. It doesn’t matter you say? Keep reading.

 

Picture yourself in a position of needing to sell your home. You don’t know who to call, so you ask some friends for referrals and call around to a few local offices. You take the time to meet with more than one agent to pick just the right person for the job. After much deliberation you choose one- they come over and sign the listing paperwork with you- then THIS happens: Out comes their phone to take pictures of your house. That you just signed an agreement to pay them TENS OF THOUSANDS of dollars to sell.

 

Ruminate on that for a bit, and let’s back up for a second.

 

Our market is changing. We have more inventory than we did a year ago, so we are returning to a much more normal market. People have equity, there are more regular (equity) sales than there are not, and there are more homes for buyers to choose from. Where are buyers looking for the homes they are deciding to look at? The internet. What are they looking at to determine if they want to see a certain home? THE PICTURES!

 

 Ok so back to you and your house for sale. A six percent commission on a $200,000 home is $12,000. TWELVE. THOUSAND. DOLLARS. And for your money, you get this. 15-20 sideways, poorly lit, blurry pictures of your house all over the internet.

 And by all over- I mean ALL OVER. Trulia, Zillow, Realtor, Movoto, Redfin, plus all of the individual local company websites and their international franchise websites. Your sideways pictures are viewable by the family relocating from Calgary to Ceres (that actually happened to us recently). Pictures are important to those people!

 

Then there’s my personal favorite. The “I-almost-forgot-to-take-a-picture-of-the-front-of-your-house drive by photo”. Who needs to actually get out of the car?? I, for one, think it is really important for potential buyers to see your door frame and side mirror.

 

 

Now let me be clear on a few things. First, bad pictures will not cause your house to NEVER sell. It will sell eventually- but maybe not for the price you originally thought it would, or it may take longer to the extent that it affects your ultimate goal you are trying to accomplish in moving. Secondly, bad pictures do not indicate that your agent is inept at representing you. All I am saying is that they are inept at marketing your home, and, in my opinion, lazy and therefore more apt to cut corners later.  Lastly I feel it important to note that all of these pictures were found in one short browse through our local MLS of active listings. It took me about 30 minutes and I ended up with way more photos than I had room for in this blog. This leads me to my next point.

 

EVERY SINGLE BUYER we have worked with in the last six months has complained to us on a regular basis about the (lack of) quality of the property photos available to them. They are not expecting professional photographer grade photos- all they want is for them to be straight, well lit, clear (not blurry), and not of just the occupants furniture! I promise you with 100 percent certainty that if your pictures met the (simple) criteria mentioned above, buyers would not pass up seeing your home before they look at all of the other homes available that have far more appealing pictures.

 

And before you say anything, I know what you’re thinking. Your agent is thinking the same thing. “Well my iPhone 5S has the best camera… yada yada yada”. Sure it is great at taking pictures of your latte, your fancy dinner and your kids baseball practice with that cool sunset in the background. You know what it is not good at?

This.

 

Or this.

 

And, to be perfectly honest, I have absolutely NO idea what this picture is. The garage? A laundry room? Your guess is as good as mine.

 

So after you sign that listing agreement- and the cell phone comes out for pictures- ask yourself if you trust that the agent you are hiring for the job has the right marketing strategy for your home, and will not continue to cut corners throughout the process. Or better yet- before you sign- while you are interviewing agents ASK them how they will take pictures, and ask to see other listings they have or that have sold recently so you can see what they have done for other clients. After all, you are HIRING someone to do a JOB for you, so why would you want to sell yourself short by choosing someone who is not willing to do the job correctly?