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Tucson Real Estate & Golf Properties

Douglas Trudeau , Assoc. Broker
Prudential Foothills Real Estate
64 N. Harrison Road, Suite 160
Tucson , AZ 85748
Mobile: 520-954-2209
Contact Me

Who Else Wants To Know How To Attract Buyers To Listings?

Its astonishing how many homes are on the market that poorly portrayed. Every REALTOR® should go to their local community college and enroll in a photography class. Some of the pictures are unbelievable. There are a lot of good pictures for buyers to see. Many look like they were taken by a professional photographer. Some look like someone took disposable camera and just shot whatever. This is what buyers see as their first impression of the homes we list. I am no professional photographer, however, I do have a sense of what may look better.

National statistics tell us that anywhere from 70-85% of all home buyers look at a home on the Internet first. The biggest complaints I get from out of state buyers is not enough or insufficient pictures. I can’t count the number of times I have gone to a property and take pictures of the home, street, view from the front, full views of the interior and back. If the majority of buyers are seeing our listings for the first time on the Internet doesn’t it make sense to give them good photos? Don’t we owe it to the sellers?

Many times I will take well over 100 photos to get 10. On a recent shooting I took 45 photos to get this one picture (right). Bit of a fanatic? Maybe, but, it came out nice. So nice the listing agent I was holding the open house for included it and nearly every other photo I gave her in the MLS. Guess whose picture is the first one buyers seeing when searching the MLS? Not this one, but another of mine (see Featured Listings on left side bar).

A good source for bad photos is REagent in Connecticut where you can find a slew of bad photos. Many of them funny. In his articles Athol commented about the sequence of photos. It makes sense to me. Following Athol, buyers want to see the front of the house, photo 1. Wives, and more & more cooking husbands, want to see the kitchen, photo 2. I have to say my son and his best friend are the cooks. My daughter in law competes with my son. But, his friends’ wife lets him do all the cooking. So with many buyers it is not just the wife who the kitchen is important to. Photos 3 and on should be the living areas, great room, living room, family room, dining room. After the first 3-5 photos the rest can be bedrooms, backyard, views, or large storage areas.

The average REALTOR® can use existing lighting to take pictures. Sunrise or sunset, cloudy days are all good for getting decent indoor photos. These are all a good way to get started. I, being a perfectionist, take it a step further. I prefer HDR photography (High Dynamic Range). Thanks to the training of Jim Cronin at The Real Estate Tomato. It takes longer, requires more equipment, but, the results are noticeably better. I’m one of those guys who likes to change his own car oil, spark plugs, and rebuild hot rod engines. So the extra work is like a hobby to me. Here are three samples from 3 different homes (first normal, second HDR):

Here is a home I found. This is what buyers are seeing on the Internet.

On the way to an appointment I stopped in for some quick sample photos. I do not like the lack of clarity through the windows, but, you can get the point and have a feel from the previous samples. Not to mention the home has been staged since the Internet photos were taken.

If you were selling this home, which pictures would you prefer? HDR takes some work, and some time for retakes unless you have your laptop with you to get immediate results. I didn’t have the time to download and do it right. If you don’t have that much time, call a professional photographer to get the best results.

Related must reads

Improve Your Listing’s Photos with HDR – Jim Cronin, The Real Estate Tomato

Rules of Good Photos – Athol, REagent in Connecticut

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 28th, 2007 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Tucson Real Estate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.