*sigh*
Long time readers already know one of my pet peeves is poor photos of homes for sale in the Multiple Listing Service.
Dean Ouellette uncovered this little nugget today:
Yes, that is the actual size of the photo uploaded into the MLS.
Nothing like displaying your client’s property in a stunning 65 x 42 pixel masterpiece.
I don’t even know how to take a picture this small…
The MLS resizes one photo to display as a “primary” photo with the listing information, so here’s what you get when it does its resizing:
Well that’s better.
In case you were wondering, here’s what the kitchen looks like:
And there is this lovely shot of the parking space:
Just for comparative purposes, here’s a kitchen shot from one of our current listings. Of note, I had to reduce the size of this MLS photo to get it to display properly here:
In addition to photos, agents and potential buyers like to see a description of the home. The MLS provides space for this as well. ANNOYINGLY, MANY AGENTS WRITE THESE DESCRIPTIONS IN ALL CAPS. But even that is better then the description that accompanied these teeny-tiny photos. It read:
Remarks:
Yep. Completely blank.
Home Sellers – Please, please check the photos your agent submits to the MLS. Photos are one of the main factors in home buyers deciding to take a look at your property. If they can’t see it in pictures, they won’t bother seeing it in real life. A description, any description, helps too.
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{ 34 comments… read them below or add one }
Ergh. Frustrating. Our MLS Board is cracking down on photo issues. The one of your kitchen is gorgeous.
It is incredibly frustrating Candice. And there is zero excuse for it.
Thanks for the compliment on the photo. Imagine yourself standing in that kitchen, perhaps hosting a dinner party. Buy that home and you wouldn’t have to imagine it…
I think large photos are so overrated Jay!
I have to say I chuckled out loud a couple of times during this read. As always, keep up the great content!
Derek
Wouldn’t it be cool if we could hit the violation (ok violation may be a bit strong) button so an email gets sent to the listing agent that says something to the effect of “Please review the photo uploading parameters. Your photo is to small to be seen by anyone”? A little tongue n’ cheek here but yeah… it’s frustrating!
Wouldn’t it be cool if we could hit the violation that sent an email to the seller to let them know how their property was being “marketed”?
.-= Jim Duncan´s last blog ..So … the Homebuyer Tax Credit Costs $100k per House =-.
If you want to run a series of bad photo posts… just search the expireds for bad photos.
.-= Athol Kay: Married Man Sex Life´s last blog ..Thanks =-.
Yet another reason to hire a high quality agent!
“I don’t even know how to take a picture this small…” That’s hysterical. There’s nothing funny about the issue though. It’s flat out negligence.
.-= Evan Fuchs´s last blog ..Bullhead City Foreclosure Report – January, 2010 =-.
Actually photos that small are almost always stolen from the prior listing. The thief goes to the listing, right-clicks on the prior listing’s images and uses “Save Image As” and steals the photo. Which would be great except he/she has done it to the thumbnail. Thumbnails, as one may note, are, well, small images. It’s not like right-clicking gets you to the original image (and thus size), it only gets you the image you see on your screen. Which is 65×42 (or whatever).
So not only is this agent stupid and lazy, he/she is unethical as well. . . . .
Jay, That photo was taken with the new special wide angle pin hole camera popular with real estate agents that use two tin cans and string for their mobile phones and work at the McDonald’s drive through on the swing shift – cutting edge stuff dude…
.-= Jeffrey Douglass´s last blog ..A Hard Lesson Learned About Internet Wisdom =-.
My favorite part which Jay did not mention… how did I find that listing? It was in my auto search I do for “expired listings.” Yes the listing expired today. Surprise surprise, i bet the agent worked hard selling that one. Hmmm wonder what I am going to be able to tell the seller when I talk to them this weekend.
.-= Dean Ouellette´s last blog ..Top 10 real estate posts of the day for 3/4/2010 =-.
So right you are Jay, pictures are incredibly important. That’s the number one complaint I get from online clients is that there isn’t enough pictures. What some agents don’t realize is that even if the listing is a “handyman fixer-upper”, interior pictures are even more helpful. Out of state clients can get a decent feel about what work probably needs to be done with enough pictures. I mean really, do those agents actually think having no pictures increases the likelihood of a sale? From my experience I can confidently say that lack of photos is a huge factor in that listing “not” getting a showing. Most online shoppers nowadays want to trim their list of showings down to a small handful, and the ones with a lot of photos generally fare a lot better.
Jay,
Nothing you and I haven’t talked about before, but your piece really brings the point home. Ironically, I think it’s the photos that really bring the message home.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this: On April 2, 2008, Realtor Mag published this:
“Research reveals that the more photos a listing has, the quicker it sells. A property with a single photo spent 70 days on the market (DOM) on average, while DOM fell to 40 with six photos, 36 with 16 to 19 photos, and 32 with 20 photos. Additionally, listings with one photo sold for 91.2 percent of the original price, while homes with six or more sold for 95 percent of the original price.”
http://www.realtor.org/RMODaily.nsf/pages/News2008040205
April 2008 seems like an eternity ago, but I wonder if it still holds true- do homes with fewer/no photos take longer to sell, and specifically, do they sell for less than homes with sufficient photos (and if there is a difference, is it a statistically significant difference?)?
What do you think?
Personally, if it still holds true, I think there could be 2 lessons for our clients: 1) Sellers should insist that Listing Agents fully and completely photograph the home they are selling and verify that the photos make it to the internet, and 2) Buyers should not discount homes with fewer/no photos, as the failure of the seller and/or Listing Agent to fully market the home will be the best place to look if the buyer is really trying to find that elusive one-in-a-million ‘deal’.
And the lesson for listing agents? If you are too busy and/or lack the skill to effectively photograph the home(s) you are listing, that’s fine- no shame in that, but hire a professional photographer to do it for you. I *used* to have downright cheap rates (under $200.00/listing), but I didn’t get hardly any business, so I moved on. I’ll still do it to help out a fellow agent, but I’ve partnered up with a fellow property photographer, so my hourly rate has increased significantly!
Please pardon me for the hijack here, Jay, but I just had another thought. Bear with me.
The most common BB Commission I see in the MLS is 2.5% or 3%; let’s assume the SB Commission is the same for this illustration.
You list a home for $200,000.00, so you stand to make a $5,000.00 to $6,000.00 (gross) commission once the house sells. You use your Blackberry to take 4 photos of the listing while you’re there. The home sits and sits, and you finally receive an offer. Using the 91% figure from the magazine, the offer is $182,000.00, meaning your commission is now $4,550.00 to $5,460.00. In other words, you just cost you and your broker $450.00 to $540.00 on this one sale. The effect to your broker depends on your split, but if the split is anything over 50/50, you will feel more of an impact than your broker.
And let’s not forget the $18,000.00 you cost your seller by not fully and effectively marketing their home to get them every last dollar you could, especially in a housing market like this one. You think the sellers would recommend you to friends and family? What’s the value of those lost commissions to you and your broker?
I don’t know about you, but I could think of a lot of things to do with an extra $500.00 per home sold. And the fact that they sell faster is icing on the cake.
Maybe if the MLS doesn’t want to/can’t/won’t mandate not just the number but the quality of the photos, maybe the brokers should start looking at the impact to them, and start mandating some changes in their own offices.
You’re right Dan, but unfortunately in most cases the seller never sees where the “fail” happened. They’ll just think it was the fault of the market in general, until they are somehow educated.
I know the MLS can’t possibly police the quality of the photos, and I don’t think it should be their responsibility. I do however believe a broker should have the smarts to oversee how each of their listings are portrayed. It is ultimately their reputation that the listing reflects on. That should be motivation enough I would think.
That’s pretty bad, I wrote a past a while back because I came across an agent who actually took a digital photo of a Polaroid and posted that in the MLS. That’s pretty bad!
.-= Alex @ Bad MLS Photos´s last blog ..Remembering Chelsea King =-.
Dan –
I have studied the photo/sales relationship on ARMLS and found it different than in that Realtor.org article. IN 2007, homes with 6 pics sold for more per sq ft than homes with less than 6 pics and for a slightly higher SP/LP but they did NOT sell fsater. In fact, they were on market much longer. I was curious about that so I broke it down into $100,000 segments by listing price and found that it even changes by price. THe lower the price, the more pics made a difference but as you move up in price it isn’t even clear that pics help on price. Over about $600,000 or so pics seemed to have little impact on price at all. (Which is a little counter-intuitive since high priced homes are usually the ones that photograph the best)
2008 is tough to do since we changed MLS providers mid-year and went from 6 to unlimited pics. I’m still working on 2009 but with the proliferation of bank-owned homes 2009 is going to have oddball results no matter what. My 2007 results were done strictly on price using all sales in the MLS. A more detailed study would be to investigate by area as well as price but hey, I get paid to sell homes and compiling info like that is time consuming. . . .
If the bad photos went away I’d sure miss those photos of the toilet seat that’s up and the open garage door with the trash in front!
Seriously, my pet peeve is homes that are listed with “no photo available.” Truly amazing in this day and age when a home is listed and the photos are not immediately uploaded. In my neck of the woods that can be the kiss of death. If there’s no photo when the home is first listed, buyers rarely come back to check it out.
With today’s $100 digital cameras, taking real estate pictures of your listings is the easy part. Really, find a camera that says “wide angle” on the box and you will be amazed at how much more of any room (including bathrooms) that gets in the shot looking totally normal, not like through a fish eye.
Our MLS in Northern Virginia allows us to upload 30 pics per listing. But if one of those pics is of a toilet with the seat up or overflowing kitchen garbage can then I lose it. Here is a tip, move the crap out of the way and just close the lid to the can!
.-= Doug Francis´s last blog ..Your house has an ice dam? Part 2 =-.
It is good to keep the subject on the front burner, and yet, the terrible photos just keep providing blogfood. If there is any good to come out of these pix, it may be that the seller can use them as proof of the incompetance of the agent. If this is the way he/she promotes a listing, what other parts of the listing or transaction are also of the same quality level. There can be no excuse for this kind of representation. PERIOD!
Hire a professional photographer for the best results. With the boom of digital cameras, professional real estate photography can be affordable. There is a great site out there for Realtors and professional photographers for real estate. http://photographyforrealestate.net/ It gives great advice about real estate photography.
Like your articles very much, Refueling.O(?_?)O
WOW that is amazingly pathetic. I agree that many homes on the residential mls system have very bad photos – or even worse photos that completely misrepresent the property. Unfortunately the same problem exists in Phoenix commercial real estate. Some brokers are incredibly lazy in marketing their properties – even when we are talking about multi-million dollar commercial properties.
.-= Marc Brodeur´s last blog ..Phoenix Commercial Retail Center is Transitioning Ownership =-.
Photo’s are first impression to the agents as well to the public. Many house are not even considered if the picture is not presentable. Hire a Pro get it right.
.-= Charles D’Alessandro´s last blog ..National and Brooklyn Homes for Sale – Economists Predict Housing Shortage =-.
The ability to sell a home depends greatly on the quality of the photos on the site. It is imperative to learn how to maintain quality photos of homes to increase potential sales and unfortunately learning some of the these tricks of the trade is necessary!
.-= Richard´s last blog ..How To Resize Pictures =-.
Isn’t is amazing how some people just don’t get it? You’re trying to sell a piece of real estate in a terrible economy, and you can’t even put decent pictures up or give a descrition? This goes to show you that no matter what walk of life you come from, there are always people that fail to use common sense.
The one thing that most home buyers want with online real estate listings… photos. So why do so many agents overlook that one thing? Is it laziness? Or is there some strategy behind it?
I agree on the MLS having poor photos and great article. Selling real estate takes a bit more these days and well said. that’s just how you roll !!
I agree, the only way to get buyers to your listings is if they like the pictures. And the more pictures the better. Bad pictures means NEXT, on to the next listing. This isn’t 2001 where we had more buyers than homes for sale and you could sit back and wait for multiple offers. Good info, thanks…
All home sellers should heed your words about checking the photos their real estate agent puts in the MLS listing. One thing that really annoys me is when I see pictures that look like they are taken with a cell phone camera. For smaller rooms these cameras can only show one corner of the room. Home sellers need to make sure that pictures are being taken with a wide angle camera. Pictures should make rooms look as large as they actually are (or larger). Wide angle cameras need to be used.
I have a question please. Who is responsible to pay for a professional photographer to come in and shoot some great pictures of our house? Us or our agent? If we let him do it, he will just use his basic digital camera and they won’t look as good. Any two cents is greatly appreciated.
North Scottsdale – I can’t interfere in an existing agency relationship such as you have with your agent. This is something you need to discuss with him. Sorry, wish I could be more help.
Jay, Here’s how you take tiny photos: you need to buy a really tiny camera!
Photos are extremely important to gettting listings shown. I am continually amazed at the poor quality of pix on my MLS. My local MLS just passed a new rule. You must post at least 1 photo. Wow, set the bar high or what? Wait, there’s more, it has to be in the first 7 days!
Some Realtors here insist they take great photos, and yes, some of them look great at first glance until you compare them with professional photos taken by a photographer with not only a wide-angle lens, but with an eye for composition as well.
I say if you don’t feel like you can shell out the bucks for professional pix, like maybe the because the house is overpriced and won’t sell, then don’t even take the listing!
I would think this is one of the first things people check when posting a picture. It is extremely detrimental to any sale. I don’t know whether to feel sorry for people when they do this or laugh at them.
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