Fair warning, rant ahead.

Fewer things drive me crazier than seeing lousy photos in a real estate listings and marketing material. 

The one thing that may be worse is a lack of photos.

I just don’t get it.

Here are two real life examples. There are hundreds thousands more. Just in Phoenix.

Example #1: There is a current listing in Paradise Valley, arguably the most expensive place to buy a home in Phoenix. This $5,500,000 home has one photo. One.

In the description of this listing, it directs the reader to view more photos and a virtual tour – by going to an expired listing.

Apparently someone just fell off the Clue Train as the public can’t view expired listings. You know the public. They are the ones that buy homes…

In a striking disregard for their client, it’s the same agent who had the expired listing. So basically this agent has photos and a virtual tour of one of the more expensive homes in Phoenix and for some inexplicable reason can’t transfer them to the new listing.

Granted, it’s only been relisted for 16 days. Maybe he/she has just been too busy to take the what, 5 minutes, that would be required to upload photos.

Example #2: This one comes from a current client, and it’s a story we hear a LOT. “Hey, this looks like a nice home, can you get me more photos?”

In this case, it’s a real estate agent that owns the home. Now I understand if John Q. Public doesn’t realize how much photos in real estate mean to marketing a home. It’s not their job to know this. But an agent? An agent whose own home is listed for 10 MONTHS but only has one picture available? Oh, they’ve dropped the price $80 grand over those 10 months, but they haven’t bothered to upload more than ONE photo?

Please. But at least this guy is only screwing himself and not his client.

The Data

Almost 25% of Phoenix home listings have 3 or fewer photos!

There are currently 50,668 single family homes and condos listed in the Phoenix MLS.

3,204 of them have no photos. None. Zip. Zero.
5,920 have only one photo.
1,398 have two pictures of the home for sale.
1,798 have three.

So at this moment in time, there are 12,320 homes listed for sale in Phoenix with three or fewer photos in the MLS. That’s almost 25%.

That is utterly ridiculous.

Our MLS allows us to upload unlimited photos. OK, not unlimited. The limit is 999. For all practical purposes, we can call that unlimited.

At a bare minimum, every home listing should have a picture of the front elevation, the rear elevation, the kitchen, the master bedroom, the master bath and the main living area. That’s six photos – at a bare minimum.

Let’s return to our trusty MLS search…..

18,075. That’s how many listings in the Phoenix MLS have less than 6 photos. 36% of Phoenix listings don’t meet the minimum requirement for photos.

Think Photos Don’t Matter?

Watch, just watch, the average person searching for homes. You’ll see the vast majority of them blow by any listing without a photo. They won’t even consider it. Now watch their frustration mount as they click “view all photos” and they see one or two pop up.

Yessir, frustrating potential buyers is a good idea.

There are 50 thousand homes for sale in Phoenix folks. If your listings don’t have photos, buyers will just move on to ones that do.

How does an agent submit a listing with 1, 2, 3 or no photos?

Beats the hell outta me.

Home sellers: ask demand to see the actual listing of your home in the MLS. Before it even gets to that point though, grill your prospective agent on how they plan to market your home.

Real estate agents: For the love of Pete, take photos. If you can’t / won’t, pay someone else to do it. This is fundamental home marketing. Do your job.

Photo Credit: Andrew Mason

I really have no idea where this is going to take me. . .

Video blogging.

I heard Gary Vaynerchuk say in his Inman Connect NYC keynote that he thought the “.tv” domain would become the second most powerful top level domain (after .com of course). Beats me if he’s right, but I don’t think it’s a stretch.

Since that keynote, there have been several posts about Gary’s talk extolling both its virtues and flaws.

Personally, I see a lot of genius in what Gary says. Does everything apply to the real estate vertical? Of course not. But much of it can be modified, and real estate needs some help. Home buyers and sellers need help. For those that are better visual learners, video may be the best way to provide that help.

Video clearly has a place in real estate, and in the future of the internet. In March of 2008, 11.5 billion videos were watched online in the U.S alone. 

I don’t think the only application for video in real estate are home walk-throughs. Crappy as they are, The Streets of Phoenix series here has been well received — not by just real estate agents, but buy home buyers and sellers.

Will Phoenix Real Estate Guy TV be worth a damn? I have no idea. But it’ll be fun. Who knows where it will go.

Episode #1 is up. If you are so compelled, take a trip over to Phoenix Real Estate Guy TV and let me know what you think.

Those that know me know I am a huge Gary Vaynerchuk fan. I was as giddy as a school girl when I found out he was delivering a keynote speech at Inman Connect NYC.

And I was not disappointed.

I thought @GaryVee’s keynote was the highlight of the conference, and I told Brad Inman later that they needed to bring him back and give him more time.

Like the full three days.

Here’s a video of Gary’s talk. It’s a little rough in the first few seconds, stick with it. The opening line, “The main objective I have here today is to make sure that I never see any one of your faces on a bus bench again” is a classic.

As Gary spoke, I observed some of the crowd for reactions. He’s a brilliant speaker — funny, engaging, all that jazz. But what is pure genius is his message. There was a couple sitting next to me and I could see in their faces and body language that they just didn’t “get it”.

I spoke to them briefly after Gary finished. Here’s how that conversation went:

Me – “What did yall think of that?”

Them – “He’s a good speaker and everything. But I don’t see how how it applies to real estate.”

Me – Stunned silence.

“Doesn’t apply to real estate”???  Are you f’ing kidding me?

Transparency is crucial. Personal branding is it. “The obnoxiously bad ROI of traditional marketing”. Creating additional revenue streams. How the hell does this not apply to real estate?

This IS real estate.

Oh well, it’s their loss. Sadly, it’s also their clients loss. Selfishly, it’s my gain.

Here’s one of my favorite snapshots of the event. Me and Gary Vaynerchuk. I’m the good looking one….

Several times a week we get questions from someone using our Phoenix home search. The questions vary wildly, from requests to see a home, general real estate related questions, and inquiries about the sellers motivation. (Note: if you are a buyer, we’re not going to get into our seller’s motivation. Why would we potentially compromise their negotiating position?)

But the most asked question we get is:

“Are there any photos available?”

Followed closely by:

“I’d like to see more photos please”

I don’t get it. Oh, I understand perfectly why the home searcher is asking the question. What I don’t get is why there are no (or few. Or bad.) photos of the home for sale.

Our MLS^[1] allows unlimited photos to be uploaded. That is not to say that there needs to be dozens and dozens of photos in the MLS. There are only so many angles at which to shoot a bathroom. But is it unreasonable to expect photos of the exterior, all the rooms and maybe even a few of the surrounding neighborhood?

At this moment in time, there are currently 45,085 active single-family homes listed in the Phoenix area MLS. 2,970 of them have a grand total of zero photos. None, zilch, zip, nada. Another 6,201 only have one picture — that’s a full 20% of the home listings in Phoenix with one or less photos. 60% of the listings have six or fewer photos.

Why is this important?

It’s not rocket science folks. Lots of people search for homes on the internet. Depending on whose numbers you choose to believe, 80 – 94% of home buyers conduct internet searches for homes. Cliche as it may be, a picture really is worth 1,000 words. What follows is my advice, for what it’s worth, for each segment of the real estate purchasing population.

Real Estate Agents & Brokers

Have you ever watched a home buyer search for homes? Try it. Note how they blow past the listings with no photos. Virtually every buyer I’ve watched or talked to just ignores listings with no photos. Watch and notice what happens when they see the primary listing photo and it kindles their interest. See the disappointment when they click for more pictures and there are none? Know what happens in that situation? Yep, they move on to the next listing, rarely giving your listing a second thought.

Home Sellers

Don’t just ask, demand that your agent supply sufficient high quality photos to properly showcase your home. View your homes listing on several real estate search sites and work with your agent to ensure your home is represented as best as it can be. Curb appeal used to be the big thing. These days “web appeal” may be just as, if not more, important in getting your home sold.

If your agents balks at the idea of photos, find another agent arm yourself with a little data that supports the more photos the better. Here is a report and some data compiled by Point2 Agent, a leading real estate website provider that shows the impact the number of photos has on how often listings are viewed. And here is a graphical representation of that data, courtesy of Point2:

Home Buyers

Where you search for homes online can make a difference. While ultimately the number of photos is in the hand of the listing agent, different home search sites may display different numbers and/or sizes of photos. Realtor.com offers a miniscule 4 photos, unless the listing agent pays handsomely for more.  The Century 21 site seems to limit photos to six. RE/Max offers more photos, but they aren’t very large. Personally, I think an individual agent’s web site in the city you are looking in generally offers the best option for viewing home photos. But even that can vary greatly depending on which search provider the agent is using.

Also, while the importance of good photos seems obvious for the out of area buyer, try not to just ignore lists with few photos. The fact is, most people will be ignoring these homes. If you pay attention to them, you may be able to discover a few hidden nuggets. That’s hard to do if you are out of area, but you may want to keep a few of these in your back pocket and at least do a drive by viewing when you get to the area and are actually looking at houses.

I wish we could respond to every person that asks about listing pictures. But we can’t. I used to try to call listing agents but just got frustrated with the number of unreturned calls and eventually realized that if there are no photos in the MLS, there likely aren’t photos on the agent’s hard drive either. 

I don’t understand this few/no/poor photos mentality. At all. Digital cameras aren’t that expensive. Don’t know how to take good photos? Take a class. Take hundreds of photos and you’ll get lucky. Hire a professional. Do something. To ignore listing photos is to ignore your clients best interest.

1. MLS = Multiple Listing Service: the database used by real estate agents and brokers to enter and search homes for sale

First, let me begin this with saying I am not “anti-FSBO” (For Sale By Owner) or anti-limited service brokerage. Yeah, I’m a real estate broker and of course I’d prefer you enlist me to help you sell your home. But if you really know what you are doing, and you have the time, and you want to sell your home yourself, go for it. Knock yourself out. There is clearly no shortage of homes for me to help sell.

But, if you are going to go FSBO, or go with a limited service agency (basically a real estate brokerage that you pay to put your home in the Multiple Listing Service while you do all the remainder of the work) then at least make sure you are spending your time, money and effort wisely. Let’s face it. Some marketing methods work, some may work, and some just flat-out don’t work — or the probability of them procuring a buyer are so remote that they aren’t worth the effort.

Here’s an example in the latter category received yesterday via email (names and MLS# obscured to protect the ignorant):

What you see above is the email in its entirety. That’s it, no attachments, no phone number, no nothing. Let me explain why this is a complete waste of time, and is not “marketing” your home effectively:

1. If I had a buyer interested in your home, I would know it’s available the second it went into the MLS. Therein lies the power of the MLS. I don’t really need an email asking me if I have a buyer. I know my buyers, and what they are looking for. Heck, my buyer had your listing before you sent this email if it was of interest to them.
2. But let’s say I am one of the lazy agents that doesn’t know how to set up good searches in the MLS to meet my clients needs. Then maybe an email asking me if I have a buyer for your home could be effective. However, consider this: If I am too lazy to set up a search, won’t I be too lazy to open up the MLS, log in, copy and paste the MLS number you provided into the system, and pull up the particulars on your home?

You see, your email that cluttered up my inbox (along with several others that day from actual agents who email flyers to hundreds if not thousands of agents in one fell spamming swoop) tells me nothing. Absolutely nothing. Do I have a buyer for your home? I don’t know. Where is it? How big is it? How much are you asking for it? Yes, I understand all that info is in the MLS, but if you are going to butt into my inbox, at least make it so I don’t have to stop what I’m doing, log into a system, and look it all up.

Normally, I would have clicked DELETE as swiftly as possible. But for the purposes of this post, I went into the MLS just to see what the deal was with this particular listing.

So now you’re going to get Jay’s bonus tips on ways not to sell your home!

Photos:  Photos are important. Really important.  These photos do nothing to help sell your home. Let’s face it, orange trees and cactus grow like weeds around here. If your landscaping is compelling, by all means showcase it. A photo of part of a tree (that needs pruning BTW) and a cactus are not compelling.

And then there is . . .

Pricing: Listing a home for $270,000 that comps at $200,000 (on a good day) is not conducive to selling your home. That foreclosure across the street? You may not like it, but it is your competition.

Again, there is nothing wrong with selling your own home. If you’re willing to take the time, understand marketing and want to take on the legal liability, go for it. But keep in mind, the Phoenix real estate market (and many other markets across the country) are not in the best of shape right now. If you really have no clue how to sell a home (and clearly some don’t) then you may want to leave it to someone that does this for a living. Will it cost you? Sure. But what is it costing you if you can’t sell your home?

Here is a video of Gary Vaynerchuck’s keynote at Web 2.0 Expo NY. He’s 32 years old and has built a $50 million dollar business.

I love this guy. He’s passionate, and pretty freaking smart.

Some nuggets from his speech. There’s plenty more:

Smurf it up.
Stop crying and just keep hustling.
You have to do what you love.
If you don’t believe in what you’re doing, get out now.
The only way to succeed now is to be completely transparent.
We only get to play this game one time, one life.

WARNING: This video contains “adult language”. If the “S-word” and occasional F-bomb offend you, don’t listen. If you want to learn and think, then watch and listen.

Vaynerchuck will be keynoting at Inman Real Estate Connect NYC in January. That alone is worth the price of admission.

I think this is spot on and brilliant. Your thoughts?

UPDATE: Now with twice the chance of winning! (see below)

It’s no secret that I’m a Seth Godin fan. Judging by the number of books he sells, the sold-out appearances and the general buzz about Seth, I am far from alone.

Seth has a new book out called “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us”. Many weeks ago I pre-ordered the book, joined Seth’s Triiibes.com social network site and waited for the book to be released.

In a move that isn’t all that surprising (given Godin’s outside the box marketing skills), a copy of Tribes arrived in my mail before the book was released. It was a free advanced copy. An included letter said:

Here’s an advance copy of Tribes. An early copy, for you, before anyone else gets one. Please read it and keep it. And when the one you paid for comes, I hope you’ll give that one away. In two weeks or so, when it arrives from the bookseller, take that second copy and spread the word. If all you do is file it away, I’ve failed.

So give it away is exactly what I’m doing.

Leave a comment on this post. It doesn’t have to be profound and deep. It doesn’t have to suck up, and it doesn’t have to convince me to pick you to get the free copy of Tribes. Next Saturday (Oct 25) Sunday, Oct 26 (my daughter wants to pick the winner and she’ll be back from a band competition on Sunday) at noon Arizona time, I’ll put the names of all who comment on this post in a hat and draw one. That person will get a copy of Tribes, on me and Seth Godin.

There is only one rule. You can’t keep it. Read it, add your name in the front inside cover and pass it on. Give it away however you want, but you have to give it away.

It doesn’t get any easier than this folks. Simply leave a comment and next Sunday a copy of Tribes could be jetting its way toward you. I’m half-way through and find the book very thought provoking. I’m sure you will too.

Update: And now, thanks to the generosity of Wayne & Pat Harriman, Realtors and runners of the wonderful Wallingford Wired weblog (how do you like that alliteration!) your chances of winning just doubled!. Wayne (quite possibly without Pat’s permission) has offered up their extra copy of Tribes to give away. So we’ll be giving away not one but TWO copies by random drawing! Thanks Pat & Wayne! (and I hear others may soon run similar contests…)

Inspired by a post Jonathan Dalton recently made on Agent Genius, I decide to put together a “Hyperlocal Neighborhood” site (and I honestly can’t believe I just used the over-hyped and worn out word “hyperlocal” in a sentence, but that’s really what it is…)

AgritopiaRealEstate.com is built on the Wordpress platform, but it’s really more a web site than a blog. It uses pages instead of posts, and will be far more “static” than your typical blog. That means far less time required of me to maintain it. It will never remotely approach the traffic of this blog, but that’s not the point. I think with a little work I can get it to rank pretty well for terms like “Agritopia real estate” and “Agritopia homes for sale”. Time will tell on that, but there is no question in my mind that as Internet users become more savvy, they learn to refine their search terms — thereby, in theory, landing on a site like this dedicated to Agritopia real estate and nothing more.

The cost of this little experiment?

Domain name: $9.00/year
Hosting: effectively zero. I host Phoenix Real Estate Guy on MediaTemple, which allows me to host something like 100 different domain names for the same cost.
My time: approximately four hours for site creation. As I already had the Thesis theme customized and laid out, the bulk of that was spent taking and cropping photos.
Gas: Agritopia is very close to my home. I dunno, 3 bucks? 

It isn’t complete yet. The text needs work and there are a few things to tie up (like titling and captioning the photo gallery) but it’s 90% or so complete.

For $12 in hard cost and four hours of my time, even if it’s a miserable failure, so what?

It is no secret that I am not a fan of traditional open houses. I think I made that abundantly clear in an article a couple of weeks ago titled, Agents that say they don’t sit opens are in my opinion lazy.

So it is with some trepidation that I announce a few Thompson’s Realty agents will be participating in an open house tomorrow.

“WHAT!?! You’re a flipping sell-out!” someone might be thinking.

Not-so-fast Sparky. I’m not talking your traditional open house where the seller vacates the premesis and the agent sits around in the living room, hoping for someone, anyone to knock on the door.

I wouldn’t do that. It’s silly. Opens very rarely sell that specific home. Whether agents want to admit it our not, the primary thing gained from holding open houses is buyer clients, or at least buyer prospects.

What we’ll be doing is a little different. Rather than invade someone’s home for several hours on the weekend, we’ll be invading the lobby of a Compass Bank branch.

Yeah, we’re holding an “Open House” in a bank. With, as one might assume, one of of the banks mortgage officers. The plan is to put two people together, a lender and an agent, that a home buyer or potential home buyer might find useful. We’ll have printouts of a few nearby homes for sale, and a laptop so we can sit with folks and cruise the MLS. There will be brochures, not for a home for sale, but for us. And we’ll shamelessly market our services — without having to couch that fact as some sort of “service” we’re doing for our seller.

Who knows what will happen. Like any open house, there could be no traffic or a lot — one never really knows. But our sellers don’t have to worry about someone casing their home for a future break-in. No one has to lock up the prescription drugs. And no one has to vacate there own home for hours on what promises to be a stellar Phoenix “fall” day.

We’ll sit an open to meet potential clients, help out some folks whether they use us or not, meet a new lender and pick his brain and we’ll have a grand time.

If you’re in the area, stop on by and say hi!

Here are the particulars:

Compass Bank / Thompson’s Realty Open House
When: Saturday September 20. 9:00am – 1:00pm
Where: Compass Bank 1085 E. Baseline Rd.
(southwest corner of Cooper and Baseline)

View Larger Map

That little gem of a title contains neither my words, nor my opinion. It’s a quote from one agents response to a question on Trulia Voices this morning.

The question came from a home seller in Glendale, AZ who was in the process of interviewing six agents to list their home (which I might add, is a very smart thing to do. Nothing is magical about the number 6, but both home buyers and sellers should interview more than one agent). “S.M.” said they were frustrated at how little work agents were offering to do while expecting a “full commission”.

S.M. said (in part):

They do not want to do open houses, broker open houses, company caravans, tour new listings, showcase or feature my home, advertise in local paper or other means, will not personally show my home (I have to deal with buyers agents to set up showing and leaving my property) or any other effective marketing tools a professional Realtor will utilize.

Several agents immediately chimed in. Some were local Phoenix real estate agents. Others hailed from opposite sides of the continent with the ubiquitous offers to “refer a qualified agent”. Many opinions were proffered.

Here is what I originally had to say regarding open houses:

Open houses rarely sell homes. They are great at finding the agent buyer clients, but the chances of someone buying your home through an open house are remote. You’re opening your home to total strangers, and hoping no one rifles your medicine cabinet or is staking out the goods to rip off later.

Shotgun marketing vs. laser focused

Many agents realize this. Others seem to believe in “shotgun marketing” — throw everything including the kitchen sink and open houses at in the dim hope that maybe a person serious about buying will be driving by, see your sign, and stumble into their dream home waiving an offer.

Heck, you might as well post flyers on all the palms trees on the corner. You never know when someone is going to be stopped at a red light, see your flyer and jot down the number so they know where to send the offer.

Our title quote came from a local agent who also had this to say:

I know you have probably been advised to use one of the bigger agents, there are pros and cons to that. The pro is that they get more leads, the cons is that you get less service. The bigger agents tend to list your home on MLS and that’s pretty much it.
_____

Yes opens rarely sell homes, and broker opens are mostly for agents to get together to network. Print ads have little efficiency. That does not mean that they should not be done.
_____

Another very important thing to look for in a listing agent is that this agent has showcase membership on Realtor.com. Realtor.com is the most important advertising channel there is. . .
_____

And of course my favorite: “The agents that say they don’t sit opens is in my opinion lazy and they use the excuse of “open houses does not sell a house”

My intent here is not to slam this agent. She is free to run her business as she sees fit, and use whatever marketing techniques she deems worthy. Oh, I’ll freely admit that I don’t appreciate, one iota, being called lazy by someone that has no idea how I run my business nor any clue about my work ethic. And much of the conversation in this thread reminded me of our current elections, complete with candidates/agents pandering, groveling and slinging mud at their opponents rather than focusing on what they have to bring to the table. That is pathetic, but not really the point here.

The point is, it is exceedingly rare for an open house to result in a sale of that home. Of course it happens. You could also try dropping leaflets from an airplane or sky writing too. Plaster your face on bus bench while you’re at it. All of these could in theory land a buyer.

I don’t have any empirical data to support just how rare it is, but there is certainly a boatload of anecdotal evidence that supports very few homes are sold at open houses. It’s quite possible that the number of people casing your home for future burglary (if not outright theft of your belongings AT the open house) outnumber the direct sales figures.

In my experience and in discussions with dozens of other agents, the overwhelming consensus is agents hold open houses for two major reasons: 1) to find buyer contacts and build their lead database; and 2) to appease their sellers.

I prefer to find buyer clients and build a prospect database sitting in my house, not dressed up and sitting in your home, tapping into your network while baking bread so the house smells good. I’m not terribly found of dragging A-frame open house signs across the neighborhood tying balloons to them and wondering if some punk is going to steal them. Open houses are a pain in the posterior for the sellers too, as to do it right, they need to clean the home. lock up or nail down anything that can be stolen and vacate the premises for hours, usually on a weekend. Why? So I can find some clients — for me.

Personally, I’d rather target my marketing efforts to find serious qualified buyers looking for the kind of home we are selling. Print ads, broker caravans and open houses don’t fit that model.

This doesn’t mean I’m better than the shotgun marketers. It doesn’t mean they “suck” or are inferior agents. It just means we are different. If you are a home seller and you want an open house, talk to us. The odds are overwhelming that we won’t hold an open, but there are always exceptions. Depending on the home, and more importantly certain location factors such as traffic flow, there may be some times where holding open houses makes sense. In every case, you will know up front exactly how we plan to market your home.

But unless you’re a licensed pilot, you can absolutely forget about the sky writing thing.

Photo credit