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Location: Visitation between Wal-Mart & Home Depot
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fierce_flawless
When we were shopping for our home, I used online real estate websites HEAVILY to decide what I wanted to see.
My agent told me that if a home had only one photo or no photos, it almost always meant there were problems with the house. Excessive repairs needed, etc. So I skipped over those with no pic or only one.
I am wondering if it's always the truth though, or could the one pic or no pic thing be due to a lazy agent?
I'm curious as now I'm browsing real estate for houses in another state for a future move, and it just has me wondering.
I get a big red flag whether the agent is less than forthcoming with pictures of problems in the house or if the agent is too lazy and low-tech to provide adequate visual aids for a buyer to judge the house.
If you have the time and want to prove your agent right, arrange showings at five houses without complete pictures. Please update the forum with your findings.
fierce_flawless, your agent doesn't seem to be doing her job. While I agree that photos are important, I always figured one of the things an agent can do for me is to tell me about the houses that I will pass over in realtor.com because there isn't enough info. Instead of having an agent ask me which houses I want to see, I expect my agent to tell me about the houses that would be good fits for me. That, of course, requires that the agent do some homework, visit houses, learn about them beyond what I can. I consider that part of the buyer agent's job.
Well I agree, but it's in the past now. We bought our home almost 2 years ago. It DOES make me wonder what other homes we might have overlooked due to this habit... but hey, you live and learn, right? We found a good home in the end, I am thankful for that... but you can bet I'll not tolerate that kind of "marketing" when we get ready to sell this place in a few years!
Quote:
Originally Posted by middle-aged mom
Me too.
I cannot control how a home is marketed by another agent. My job is to help a buyer find the best match and I am not going to limit this to good, bad or non existant pictures.
On the flip side, I hire professionals for a photo shoot, an interactive floor plan and exterior shots because marketing matters and many agents rely on it, instead of seeing homes, first hand.
Just curious; do you hire the same person to do all of the above or does the floor plan feature require a separate person aside from the photographer? Just curious, because after my home buying experience, I thought quite a bit about getting into the business of properly marketing real estate, including pics and floorplans and such.
When we were shopping for our home, I used online real estate websites HEAVILY to decide what I wanted to see.
My agent told me that if a home had only one photo or no photos, it almost always meant there were problems with the house. Excessive repairs needed, etc. So I skipped over those with no pic or only one.
I am wondering if it's always the truth though, or could the one pic or no pic thing be due to a lazy agent?
I'm curious as now I'm browsing real estate for houses in another state for a future move, and it just has me wondering.
We are newbies, we just started looking to buy the past couple of months and one of our first experiences was just one picture of a house. The outside of the house needed a 'little' work - mostly the front staircase, rest of the house was pretty okay. Lawn well manicured, everything looked very clean outside. We went ahead and went by after looking at other houses to see it in person. The house matched its internet picture. Went around to the backyard, detached garage and a shed, still good. Once we hit the fenced in back porch, things changed. Right away we could see warping on the porch floor, even the door was warped so we had to give it a hard shove to open it.
Went inside and gasped Water stains on the walls. Dry rot in the floors everywhere and the floors were severely warped and sloped so that we were walking slightly like we were climbing up a hill sideways. Severe water damage in the ceilings. We couldn't figure out how in the world there was a second story still standing. Long story short - we skip the one picture deals, that was just our experience.
As I scroll through online ads I want to see more pictures, including all bedrooms and baths. As another poster said, I want to see how the windows are set, where the bathroom/closet are in the master, if the bath has shower only or tub only or both/combo. Everyone has different requirements and taste in houses and I wouldn't waste any time on a house that had no photos. I like the virtual tours, but sometimes they distort the room and it's hard to "fit' furniture. That is one reason I love to tour open houses and home tours, design tips, fabric tips, and see how furniture looks in a 'real' situation.
Yes its true. Lack of pictures means they are hiding something.
That is not necessarily true.
Lack of pictures may mean the Seller is a privacy nut. Some do not even want to allow a For Sale sign.
Lack of pictures may mean inept Listing Agent.
Lack of pictures may mean they don't see value of photos.
Lack of pictures may mean that it is hard to photo the property.
Lack of pictures may mean that the agent is dependent on another undependable party to take the photos. That may reflect on competence, but there are many great agents who struggle with computer skills.
I liked middle-aged mom's thought: "It's disappointing that an agent discourage a client from considering homes with minimal pictures, instead of getting off their butts and finding the best matches on the market, at the time.
The more pictures that are shown, the more reasons for the buyer to dismiss it, for superficial and/or unarticulated reasons. Even the order of pictures is sufficient to turn off, some buyers."
Actually, the thought of photos as a reason to disqualify a home for superficial reasons occurred to me recently.
Wanting my clients to see all properties, I do not hesitate to pull tax roll photos of properties, or of old listings of the property, if I think the client may have interest.
I have driven by homes and shot and emailed photos to my clients.
That is part of my function, to help the client discover value.
Face it, if I am convinced that many folks will ignore a home without photos, shouldn't I be researching the property since less competition due to less Buyer traffic may deliver a bargain to my client?
That is not necessarily true.
Lack of pictures may mean the Seller is a privacy nut. Some do not even want to allow a For Sale sign.
Lack of pictures may mean inept Listing Agent.
Lack of pictures may mean they don't see value of photos.
Lack of pictures may mean that it is hard to photo the property.
Lack of pictures may mean that the agent is dependent on another undependable party to take the photos. That may reflect on competence, but there are many great agents who struggle with computer skills.
I liked middle-aged mom's thought: "It's disappointing that an agent discourage a client from considering homes with minimal pictures, instead of getting off their butts and finding the best matches on the market, at the time.
The more pictures that are shown, the more reasons for the buyer to dismiss it, for superficial and/or unarticulated reasons. Even the order of pictures is sufficient to turn off, some buyers."
Actually, the thought of photos as a reason to disqualify a home for superficial reasons occurred to me recently.
Wanting my clients to see all properties, I do not hesitate to pull tax roll photos of properties, or of old listings of the property, if I think the client may have interest.
I have driven by homes and shot and emailed photos to my clients.
That is part of my function, to help the client discover value.
Face it, if I am convinced that many folks will ignore a home without photos, shouldn't I be researching the property since less competition due to less Buyer traffic may deliver a bargain to my client?
If they want to draw the most buyers they should have plenty of photos. When we were looking for a house i would not look at anything without photos. My time is valuable, I am not willing to spend the time driving to a home that turns out to be a dump.
Thanks, all, this is info is VERY eye opening for me.
We were working with a pretty tight set of parameters in our house hunt: house had to be built pre 1930, house had to have 3 bedrooms, wood floors (even if covered), had to have an impressive front porch. Had to not be remuddled beyond recognition as an old house, had to have no major system problems common to older homes (old wiring, plumbing, etc)... and that limited us to just a few neighborhoods in our city, and then 2 or 3 of those were eliminated due to safety issues and another 2 or 3 due to price...we were on a pretty tight budget for all that.
So, I was willing to look at anything that came pretty close to fitting our criteria because sometimes the outside tells you NOTHING about the interior charm...but every time I found one with only one pic, my agent was convinced it probably had major structural issues or something and always steered us away from it.
I'll know in the future to check out anything that looks like it might be a good find in the future, regardless of the number of pics on the sites!
you definately should look, especially with that tight of parameters, anything that matches.
The more pictures that are shown, the more reasons for the buyer to dismiss it, for superficial and/or unarticulated reasons. Even the order of pictures is sufficient to turn off, some buyers."
The problem is, thinking like that is giving value and credence to the rare exception, or an unproven hypothosis, when we know in fact that the vast majority of buyers want to see photos online. There are ample buyer surveys and website traffic data that validate and prove this. Buyers want to see listings with multiple photos, it can't be disputed, it's well known. There is no data that suggests buyers are turned off by too many photos.
Many years ago, I noticed that my out of state buyers were disproportionately curious about listings with virtual tours and full sets of photos. When they would send a list saying "these are the 8 homes we are most interesed in seeing when we get to Austin", 5 or 6 would be fully loaded with vt, nice photos, and often the photos displayed a well staged home. This repeatedly happened, over and over again. What is one to conclude?
I do agree also that it's the agents role to select or deselect homes for the buyer, regardless of the buyer's list, and let them know why certain listings were added or deleted from the showing list.
But no doubt, with almost all listings publically available, the buyer determines the pool of candidate properties and the showing list to a much higher degree than was the case 10 years ago when it was almost entirely up to the agent.
Times have changed. Agents adapt and survive, or cling to old habits and fade away.
The point of all real estate marketing is to make someone's phone ring for an appointment to see the property because people don't buy homes off the internet.
I'll politely disagree with this statement. As a child of the Internet era, I am about 90% confident that I'm willing to buy something (car, woodworking tools, or house) based on the pictures. I've learned to look at small details in the pictures to give me a good feel for the house.
Seeing lots of pictures gives me a good idea on what I will think of the house. If I find one that looks really good and has striking features, I'll make a special appointment to go see that house, and chances are very high it will sell. If it only has one picture, I might see it in a tour of six homes.
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Went around to the backyard, detached garage and a shed, still good. Once we hit the fenced in back porch, things changed. Right away we could see warping on the porch floor, even the door was warped so we had to give it a hard shove to open it.
Water stains on the walls. Dry rot in the floors everywhere and the floors were severely warped and sloped so that we were walking slightly like we were climbing up a hill sideways. Severe water damage in the ceilings. We couldn't figure out how in the world there was a second story still standing. Long story short - we skip the one picture deals, that was just our experience.
more pictures
