« Previous entry: Wednesday smile • • • Next entry: NVAR vs. 747 -- care to place a bet? »
No interior photos? No need to visit that house!
Scott Rogers writes:
No interior photos?
No need to visit that house!
Some sellers find it absurd that a buyer would have this mentality as they decide which homes to visit — they assume that if a buyer is serious, they’ll come see the house for themselves even if there aren’t any (or very many) interior photos.
But buyers are smart, and make reasonable generalizations: most homes without interior photos are hiding something. Perhaps it is the awful condition of the home, or the hideous decor, or the tiny rooms. In most cases where only one photo exists for a house for sale, there is something that the seller doesn’t want to have highlighted for the world to see.
And thus, as busy buyers pare down their list of homes to view, they will often assume the worst of houses that do not have interior photos.
I don’t believe that sellers need to go overboard with how many interior photos are posted to the MLS or other web sites, but it is essential to include some interior photos so that prospective buyers can have at least some idea of what to expect.
On the other hand, homes with only a few photos can turn out to be real bargains because fewer people are looking at them.
I don’t know that it’s the sellers who don’t want pictures. I assume it’s the agents who aren’t taking them. Why aren’t sellers asking their agents to take more pictures?
Surely sellers should know the old adage that “A picture speaks a thousand words.” Why anyone wouldn’t want 15 to 20,000 words to describe their home is beyond me? There’s a reason that the MLS only allows a certain number of words in the home description but allows for many more pictures.
Everytime I send a listing from MLS to a potential buyer and the listing doesn’t have a photo attached, they skip it completely. It’s pretty amazing how many sellers don’t even know what their listing looks like on the internet and the MLS.
Great post.
Website Homes for sale in Bucks County
I found that homes with no photos sell for 15k less. So buyers would be silly to skip these homes.
Now wouldn’t it be great if somebody made a service that brought all the buyer agents together and they shared photos of photoless listings?
That would be revolutionary.
Frank
One word to describe it: laziness. Get off your ____ and earn your commission people.
Frank - That would be, wouldn’t it :)
I’d have to say that Danilo nailed it. And we wonder why our image ranks below attorneys in the minds of many these days?
In my business I work with unique inns. When they are marketing themselves to the public as a great B&B to stay at, interior photos as part of a killer website are critical. What a lot of poeple don’t realize is that it’s harder to take interior photos than you think. A lousy photo can actually give a bad impression of a great room, but a good photographer can make even a so-so room look halfway decent. So, do take interiors, but learn how to get a decent shot or spend the money to hire a professional photogrpaher (who does architectural interiors) to do the job. With higher end listings, this would be a must.
It’s amazing how many listings have interior photos that are not staged at all and sometimes not even cleaned up (dishes, clothes, etc.). Taking the time to stage each shot (by moving furniture and accessories around if necessary, interior lighting, etc.) can make a huge difference. Sometimes I’ll visit a property and say to myself: “wow, this room is really impressive” and when I go back and look at the picture of the room in MLS it looks very ordinary. Real estate photography is a fine art, you don’t want to go too much overboard either.