THE IMPORTANCE OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN YOUR REAL ESTATE LISTINGS, PART I, by Hunter Robertson

In these days of internet listings, the value of photography in selling real estate is obvious - every listing has them and are the first thing a prospective buyer looks at. I don’t think anyone will argue with that. Like an online dating profile without a picture, a listing without photography will just get passed over - even a Photoshopped fantasy is probably preferable to the void of an impersonal grey square.

A study that The Wall Street Journal1 reported on last year, which tracked buyers’ eye movement while looking at online listings, shows that the most important thing in a listing is the very first photograph - 95% of users viewed it first for a total of 20 seconds. It also found that “when viewing an online real-estate listing, home buyers spend about 60% of their time on photos, 20% on the property description and 20% on the real-estate agents’ remarks section.”

So, the need for photography is obvious. What seems to be less obvious in real estate is the need for good photography. The number of photographs used in listings which show dark caves, houses that look like they've been tossed by burglars and so on is astonishing. There are even websites devoted to the horrors of poor real estate photography - you might have seen the recent news story about a man who accidentally caught himself nude in the photographs he took to sell his house!

Now of course, as a professional real estate photographer I might have a biased view on the subject. But look at all the marketing that surrounds us - do you see anything but the best photography in the ad campaigns run by any of the major brands? The value of good photography is obviously appreciated by them. With the properties that you market you aren’t just selling potatoes or boiled cabbage - you’re dealing in dreams. And as long as the photography does its job honestly and well, then everyone benefits from it: the seller whose property is shown in its best light, the buyer who can get a good idea of what a place looks like before visiting it and the real estate agent who should be able to make a quicker sale at a better price (as other studies such as Redfin’s2 have shown). Another benefit for the real estate agent using good photography is that it shows potential sellers that you're serious about marketing and go about it professionally.

Next week’s column will cover several simple tips that you can use to make dramatic improvements to your real estate listings.

Before and after shots of a studio apartment, showing the difference between a snapshot and a photo taken using some of the techniques this series will cover.

Hunter Robertson is a photographer specializing in real estate, interiors and architectural photography, based in Geneva, Switzerland - www.hrphotographie.com

1.http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324077704578360750949646798
2.http://www.redfin.com/research/reports/special-reports/2013/professional-photos-2013.html#.VA9MrlYqqkL

©2014 Hunter Robertson