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We've seen many discussions about bad photography in real estate listings but should it be so hard to find that one picture that summarizes the listing to maximize exposure and, hopefully, an offer price? I believe the general rule is the viewer should see an overall view of the front of the property with a clear approach to the front door but there are exceptions to the rule that make sense. These could include a well landscaped pool area, a waterfront or mountain view from the house or a unique feature to the house itself, like a newly renovated kitchen.
Why is it then that we still often see chosen a picture of an apparently windowless room almost totally occupied by a single piece of furniture which invariably is not included in the sale? I ask because I have just come across this listing for an $850,000 waterfront house where the lead picture, out of sixty available, is of a sinking paver walk, an electric service and meter, a satellite dish, an old hose, an untrimmed bush and a myriad of drain or irrigation piping and a dry well or underground vault for the irrigation system. Also visible is an old picket fence and an oblique view of two garage doors, and a couple more control boxes of some sort and a hint that an actual front door is just to the other side of the garage.
It is not until picture #33 that it appears there is waterfront and a dock - shouldn't one of the waterfront pictures have been featured? Without opening up the individual, larger shots you must get to picture #45 to reveal what may be the reason for not having the entryway as part of the lead picture - a large POD in the driveway, but any decent photographer should have been able to find an angle towards the front door while keeping the POD out of the shot. Is there really a real estate photographer who doesn't know how to use a wide angle lens?
What other "money shots" have you seen that would cause the casual viewer to just move on rather than open the whole listing?
Last edited by kokonutty; 10-08-2021 at 11:46 PM..
I actually saw a kitchen with a lot of condiments, bottles on the kitchen counter, a torn towel on the range, dishes in sink. I kept wondering why wouldn’t you have cleaned up for the pictures?
I think there is somewhat of a problem leading with a water shot. That makes me think it is either a tear down, condo, or piece of land. I think it is pretty normal to show the home’s exterior as the main shot. I rarely open listings that show anything else as 90% of the time it seems like it one of the three types of properties I’ve listed.
Nothing wrong with the pictures of this listing. The order might be off, but Zillow displays them all on a single page if one scolls for 2 seconds. I imagine what's happened is that the photos were loaded to Zillow in the order they were shot rather than an order that would tell a story. There are also too many exterior drone type photos in my opinion.
We've seen many discussions about bad photography in real estate listings but should it be so hard to find that one picture that summarizes the listing to maximize exposure and, hopefully, an offer price? I believe the general rule is the viewer should see an overall view of the front of the property with a clear approach to the front door but there are exceptions to the rule that make sense. These could include a well landscaped pool area, a waterfront or mountain view from the house or a unique feature to the house itself, like a newly renovated kitchen.
Why is it then that we still often see chosen a picture of an apparently windowless room almost totally occupied by a single piece of furniture which invariably is not included in the sale? I ask because I have just come across this listing for an $850,000 waterfront house where the lead picture, out of sixty available, is of a sinking paver walk, an electric service and meter, a satellite dish, an old hose, an untrimmed bush and a myriad of drain or irrigation piping and a dry well or underground vault for the irrigation system. Also visible is an old picket fence and an oblique view of two garage doors, and a couple more control boxes of some sort and a hint that an actual front door is just to the other side of the garage.
It is not until picture #33 that it appears there is waterfront and a dock - shouldn't one of the waterfront pictures have been featured? Without opening up the individual, larger shots you must get to picture #45 to reveal what may be the reason for not having the entryway as part of the lead picture - a large POD in the driveway, but any decent photographer should have been able to find an angle towards the front door while keeping the POD out of the shot. Is there really a real estate photographer who doesn't know how to use a wide angle lens?
What other "money shots" have you seen that would cause the casual viewer to just move on rather than open the whole listing?
I wouldn't have lead with the shot of the water. IMO, the listing photos tell a story and need to be in an order that makes sense and take the viewer through the house in a logical manner.
This being said . . . that first picture is clearly a poor selection. It's not an ugly house and they could have gotten a much better exterior photo. They were probably trying to avoid the pod in the. driveway which there is no way to avoid no matter how good of a photographer you are because it's right up against the garage. However, if they hadn't been lazy or cheap (whichever is the case) they could have gotten the exterior photographed before the pod showed up. Also, 60 photos is just total overkill for a house this house. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
I was very impressed with the pictures my realtor posted for the sale of my house. He and his photographer took wonderful shots both interior and exterior. The realtor selected the best ones and posted them in a very logical, walking tour order. Just the right balance of inside/outside pictures. He staged the house using my furniture, albeit very few pieces- just enough to show the rooms' purposes. And no crazy fish eye pictures. They don't really make the rooms look larger; they only look weird.
I can't believe some of the pictures that I see posted on zillow. Dirty dishes in the kitchen; unmade beds; laundry (dirty?) strewn around the bedrooms. Broken window coverings. And the ones with too many pictures. Nobody wants to wade through fourteen shots of your living room or every limb on the tree in front of the house.
I think I would have led with #46, the lower angle drone shot that shows the front of the house and the water behind. One might have been able to airbrush the POD out.
I was very impressed with the pictures my realtor posted for the sale of my house. He and his photographer took wonderful shots both interior and exterior. The realtor selected the best ones and posted them in a very logical, walking tour order. Just the right balance of inside/outside pictures. He staged the house using my furniture, albeit very few pieces- just enough to show the rooms' purposes. And no crazy fish eye pictures. They don't really make the rooms look larger; they only look weird.
I can't believe some of the pictures that I see posted on zillow. Dirty dishes in the kitchen; unmade beds; laundry (dirty?) strewn around the bedrooms. Broken window coverings. And the ones with too many pictures. Nobody wants to wade through fourteen shots of your living room or every limb on the tree in front of the house.
The shots that puzzle me are the ones showing a piece of furniture in the corner of a room...??? In this particular market almost everything is a SFH. When one of the few condos comes up on the market they inevitably start off showing fancy kitchen updates. When you realize you'd have shared walls and no acreage it is usually quite a letdown.
The shots that puzzle me are the ones showing a piece of furniture in the corner of a room...??? In this particular market almost everything is a SFH. When one of the few condos comes up on the market they inevitably start off showing fancy kitchen updates. When you realize you'd have shared walls and no acreage it is usually quite a letdown.
Now that you mention kitchen updates you remind of something that never fails to give me a chuckle - at least a third of the kitchen sink pictures I see show water coming from the faucet, as if the typical viewer has never seen such a modern convention.
That Palm City listing was terrible.........Its just a bad layout of the photos, easy fix - rearrange the order
This is a house that has been for sale for years, maybe even a decade (owner died in 2009 I think). In some of the listings they don't even show the pool (its terrible, next to the driveway like it was an after thought. House is ridiculously big, the entrance is over the top and then you start in a gymnasium sized living room. Their opening shot is clearly the best "angle" for this home. There isn't much you can do to fix the scale issues
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