Do-It-Yourself vs. Professional Real Estate Photography

"Increasingly, agents and sellers are turning to professional photographers
to do what they themselves cannot: Take those jaw-dropping glamour shots
even when the home isn’t a mansion or an architectural gem."
[SOURCE: LA Times]

Which of these two Big Macs would you rather eat?


I admit it. I’m biased toward professional real estate photography, since I take photos of homes for a living. But if you’ve spent any time looking at online home listings I think you’ll have to agree, amateurish photos of homes can be quite a turn-off. Amazingly, even high-priced homes often are presented as if they are the result of a “drive-by shooting.”

For example, here’s a home located in my local market. It’s listed at nearly $1 million.


No pro photo, this one. Do you like the lovely blue tint? How about the time stamp that shows it was taken in May (it’s now September and the property still hasn’t sold, but the same photo is still being used to market the property).

I drove by the home with my partner and we decided to re-shoot it just for kicks. It took us about five minutes:



Our improved photo is not presented as a boast, just an illustration of how much better a million-dollar home can be presented with knowledgeable use of a camera. No blue cast, we’re in closer instead of across the street, we’re up higher so we can see over the fence and can appreciate the landscaping, the details of the entryway, etc.

Good Listing Photos Sell

My point is simply this: presentation matters. People connect emotionally to pictures, so whether one is selling Big Macs or homes, pictures can either help or hinder that connection.

Based on what I’ve seen and what many real estate agents have told me in recent months, most real estate listing photos are taken by the listing agents themselves, or sometimes by a staff person who provides marketing support to a team of agents. Listing photos are even taken by the companies that put out the “for sale” signs on the lawns. That tells me something about the perceived importance of the photos, at least when the homes are not mansions. Professional photography seems to be reserved for luxury homes.

As a professional real estate photographer, I’m always interested to know the reasoning behind this phenomenon. The majority of opinions among real estate agents seem to break down as follows:

Professional photography is not considered to be worth the expense unless the home price is over $1 million.

1. My sellers generally don’t want to pay for pro photography and I don’t either, unless I have to.
2. (This seems to say “I don’t see the value.”)
3. My photos are good enough – I don’t need to hire a pro.
   

Lets examine these ideas.

Is pro photography worth the expense?

First of all, let’s quantify the expense. Most professional real estate photographers charge somewhere between $200 and $350 for a set of photos that can be used for the MLS, flyers, virtual tours, and so on. At our firm, we currently charge $200 for a ten room house, and a little more for larger homes with more rooms. It takes us about three to four hours to do an assignment, including photography, photo editing and travel time. That works out to somewhere between $50 and $67 per hour in compensation.

Is this expense worth it? It all depends on one’s options. From the point of view of the listing agent, if they are a good photographer, with good equipment, and can take good photos, then they can simply compare the cost of their time against that of a professional. Successful agents who highly value their time may conclude that it’s cheaper to hire a pro. Low-producing agents will conclude the opposite, but then most low-producers are not good real estate photographers, it seems.

Problem is, many (if not most) real estate agents are not good photographers, so just comparing the time they would spend vs. the money is not necessarily valid.Are any real estate agents good photographers? I believe some are, but it’s hard to tell because good photos are not signed by the photographer. However, any time spent browsing through real estate listing web sites will quickly convince you that most real estate agents are not good photographers. About one-third of the photos are good, one third are fair, and one third are either poor or entirely absent.

Of the good photos, most depict upper-end homes, so many of those are probably shot by pros or talented in-house staffers.

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the leading real estate firms is Pacific Union. They tend to specialize in the luxury home market. They require each of the sellers they represent to agree to professional real estate photography services as a condition of the listing.
At the other end of the spectrum, many real estate companies seem to care little or not at all if their agents depict client properties poorly in their online marketing. (See BadListingPhotos.com). What we see in the “fair” to “poor” categories of listing photos runs the gamut from little to no preparation of the home itself for photography to amateurish handling of the camera. Not to mention inattention to editing of photos to fix simple problems such as color casts, lens distortion, contrast and composition.

I wonder why so many agents (and the sellers that hire them) set such low standards in this critical area of marketing their product? Is it laziness? Perhaps, but I know many hard-working agents who use poor listing photos. I tend to think that it is simple ignorance. Real estate agents are not trained to perceive the difference between good and bad listing photos, so they are indifferent about improving their own photography or hiring professionals.

I ran across a response to a blog posting recently from an agent in Virginia that questioned the do-it-yourself approach:

"I think that agents should stick to what they know, and hire out for
pictures…there is no excuse not to; it’s and inexpensive ROI, considering that
photos get people in the door, and that’s how homes are sold. Every photo and
marketing opportunity needs to be optimized for web viewing and browsing. Good
photographers bring lighting to a shoot and we all know what lack of good
lighting looks like. Most of us don’t cut our own hair…we shouldn’t take our own
pictures, either."

Deborah A. Rutter
Virginia Realtor

Listing Photos for REOs are Among the Worst

There’s another prevailing view about pro photography that often surfaces in today’s market: REO property, which usually means vacant property, is not considered worthy of professional photography or staging. The feeling seems to be that since the bank won’t spend a nickel on anything to help sell the house, and since the bank can be expected to simply lower the price if the property isn’t selling, why waste money on fancy photos?

I have had agents who sell REO explain this to me and I’m still baffled. Wouldn’t it help them earn more REO listings if they could show the bank asset managers they are actively and intelligently marketing the bank’s foreclosures, trying to minimize the bank’s loss (instead of simply settle for the most convenient offer)? Good photos can be strong selling tools, even for vacant homes. Today we are using virtual staging to warm up the otherwise soulless look of a vacant home. The cost for this added service is low, and the potential for faster sales and higher closing prices is high. So it would seem to be a mistake to dismiss the value of good listing photos for REOs as well as normal listings.

Bad Listing Photos Cost Sellers Time and Money

Both agents and sellers pay for this error in judgment. I believe it is a serious error because we now know from various surveys (NAR’s included) that over 90% of home buyers start their search for a home on the Internet, and the listing photos are the single biggest influence in determining which homes are selected for further investigation. Bad listing photos cause buyers to skip over properties that don’t “zing” them, visually speaking.

If a real estate agent insists on taking their own listing photos, then it would be in their best interest (and their sellers’) to make sure they know how to produce good ones. This starts with having the right equipment (Digital SLR camera, wide angle lenses, tripod, image editing software, etc.). They also need to know how to compose a pleasing picture, how to expose it correctly, and how to edit each photo. A professional normally spends anywhere from two to four hours performing these tasks. Given the many tasks real estate agents must perform, I doubt that many of them put this amount of time into taking their listing photos.

If you are a home seller, you should be asking your listing agent during the listing presentation to show examples of their past listings, including pictures. Ask them who will be taking the pictures of their home to ensure that they will present the home at its best. Buyers want to see pictures – lots of them – and the better the home looks in pictures, the more buyers will ask to see the property.

Conclusion

Professionally shot pictures will have up-front costs, but the returns to the seller and listing agent usually more than compensate. Whether the market is hot, or not, the better the photos, the higher the response rate to your professionally photographed listing.

In the end, you and your seller should be asking yourselves "Which costs less: professional real estate photography, or your first price reduction?"