Use better photos to sell more properties online
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Written by Atila on October 20, 2008 – 11:39 pm
A recent Wall Street Journal article screamed across its headline: “Why Don’t Real-Estate Agents Use Better Photos?” The question has been troubling real estate agent consultants and the experts at the National Association of Realtors for some time. The Wall Street Journal started off its piece by stating the common sense and obvious: “Considering the bleak state of the housing market, one would think that agents and sellers would be working overtime to market what’s out there. Yet when Developments visits real-estate sites, we see many listings featuring poorly taken, grainy photos that do little to show what a home looks like, let alone what might be special about it. Worse, some listings include no photos at all.”
Research has shown time and again that photographs on the web help sell a house. They need to be sharply focused, include panoramic shots and if possible a virtual tour which will help bring the property and it location to life. Some agents get it to the point that online real estate listing site Realtors.com charges agents at least $200 (on a variable rate based on region) to include more than one photograph with their listing.
Still many Realtors fail to get the message and of those who do there is a sizeable percentage who will include badly focused, badly lit, photographs of properties shot at an angle that half obscures them with shrubbery. Unsurprisingly few of the properties that fall into this category ever sell leaving realtors struggling to use their contacts and find prospects in the offline world.
The evidence that high quality, pin-sharp photographs, panoramic shots and virtual tours help sell properties is so overwhelming that it can only be assumed that Realtors who do not make use of them feel that they are not really technically competent to shoot and manipulate digital photographs or the cost involved which can, over number of listings accrue to a considerable sum, makes it prohibitive for them to do so.
For them and indeed everyone who is interested in successfully closing real estate sales by using the website as a first step the one-click panoramic systems that exist such as Giroptic help reduce overheads and professionalize online real estate presentations without becoming a drain on resources.
Usually there is a one-off cost involved in buying the camera system (Giroptic have a patented one-click system) and a small cost in getting the photographs online where they are turned into virtual tours.
The whole thing takes just a few minutes per house and the result is that a highly professional appearance is achieved which leads to more leads, more house viewings and, inevitably, more sales.
