Aug
Guide to Using Photos In Real Estate Marketing
Audience: Realtors
Photographs are a central component of marketing a property. The primary function that photos perform is to get prospective buyers to come look at the property and contact you, the agent!
In today’s market where 87% or more home buyers start their home search online, a little thumbnail of the front of the property becomes the first reason buyers choose to look at more photos of your listing instead of the 20 others at the same price and location. Great interior photos, in turn, become the reason a buyer chooses to look at your listing instead of the others. As pointed out by Vivian Toy in her classic February, 2007, New York Times article, Making Every Pixel Count,“a picture can be worth more than a thousand words, much, much more.”
But there are even more compelling reasons for using great photography to present your listing:
- The home seller client will be pleased with how you are presenting their property.
- It’s a well-established fact that great photos and marketing materials are a way to get more listings. Neighbors of the listing property watch carefully how a property is marketed. If they like what the see, they will ask you to list their property.
- If you are competing for a listing, the commitment of professionally-done photography and marketing materials can help you win the listing.
As the marketing expert in charge of selling your client’s property, it is very important these days to understand the way marketing photos work so you can use photography to maximum benefit, whether you are shooting your own photos or hiring a professional photographer.
Here are 10 essential principles that you can use to give your marketing photos maximum effectiveness:
- Keep in mind what the primary purpose of a real-estate marketing photo is. It’s to sell the property. Make sure each photo visually supports this purpose. Anything that distracts the viewer’s attention from this purpose should be eliminated, if possible. Items 3 through 8 below are the most common distractions that pull the viewer’s attention away from the purpose of the photo. Also, photo composition is all important because it controls the viewer’s attention and causes them to focus on the photo.
While the photo on the left shows perspective and gives the viewer a feel for the size of the room, a table is blocking the key feature of the room. The image to the right draws attention to the fireplace and a large window with a view.
. - Use a wide-angle lens to shoot interiors. Wide-angle lenses increase the feeling of space in interiors. What’s a wide-angle lens? Lenses with a wide enough angle of view to shoot interior don’t usually come with off the shelf-cameras. For interiors, a lens should be between 16mm and 24mm effective focal length.
- Remove clutter and stage interiors for best results. It’s a well-known fact that staging homes pays off. Homes sell faster and for a higher price when they are staged. Most lived-in homes have too much clutter. Photos will look better and show more of the home if clutter is reduced and furniture is staged by a trained home stagger.
- The primary exterior shot is THE most important photo. Spend extra time, money and effort to get a “knock-out” front photo because this is the photo that will be seen most and first by prospective home buyers. Online thumbnails of this photo must entice the buyer to look closer at the property. Encourage the seller to put extra effort into preparing the curb view. Many homes benefit from an elevated front shot where the camera is 10’ to 20’ above the street level. The green-checked image here was shot at about 15′ above street level. There is certainly a place for an elevated photograph, depending on the property.
Given the size of the image on MLS listings, a closer image of the front of the home at eye level to reflect curb appeal is the most appropriate for many agents. This applies to modest as well as expensive properties.
- Render interiors light and bright. Bright interiors are upbeat and make a more positive impression on the prospective buyer, so you want light, bright photos. Photos from amateur cameras are often under exposed. Special lighting or photo-editing techniques must be used to get interior rooms to appear light and bright.
- Vertical lines (walls, etc.) must look perfectly straight. We live in a world where we unconsciously know that all walls are perfectly vertical. When a viewer sees a room where the walls are not parallel with the side of the photo, the viewer is visually distracted and disoriented. A voice in your head is saying this is not right.
- Vertical and horizontal lines must be straight. Wide-angle lenses cause lines near the edges of photos to curve so special efforts and software must be used to remove distortion.
- Don’t let bright windows distract. Unless special lighting or photo-editing software is used, interior windows will tend to look too bright, so the view out the window is not visible. It is always possible to show the view out the window if it is an important selling point of the property; however special work by the photographer may be required to make sure the exterior view is clearly visible.
- Don’t let color casts distract. Strong color casts (typically a strong orange color) distract the viewers attention.
- The way photos are presented, both online and in print, has a big impact on the overall effectiveness of marketing a property. Photos have the most impact when presented large (800×600 pixels or larger) and in a smooth, easily-controllable slide show. Real estate sites typically do not present photos in the most effective way possible. The purpose of a virtual tour or slide show is to maximize the impact of marketing photos.
As a realtor, you can look for a photographer that uses these principles. If you are technically inclined you can use these principles to shoot photos yourself, or have support staff with technical expertise shoot the photos.
As the listing agent in charge of marketing a property, you are responsible for implementing these principles. Use these guidelines to produce, select and present your marketing photos for maximum effectiveness.
If you or someone on your support staff is not up to creating photos that follow the 10 essential principles above, hire a professional real-estate photographer to shoot photos of your listing.
For a few hundred dollars a listing you can hire a professional real-estate photographer. Experienced real-estate photographers will follow these principles. But remember, you are the marketing expert. If you don’t see these principles being followed, ask questions.
This post material is licensed by PhotographyForRealEstate.net under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/. It has been modified from the original for this blog post to reflect the views of Fred Depp Photography. Any modifications or additional artwork fall within the scope of the linked license. The license only applies to this specific post. Other posts and content of freddepp.com remains protected by copyright unless specially stated otherwise.
