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Are Your MLS Pictures Preventing Your House From Selling?

By Bill Petrey

Real Estate Agent with AgentHarvest - A Real Estate Agent Finder Service

August 21, 2009 03:05 PM

So many things wrong with this picture. Great house pictures attractive buyers while bad pictures repel home buyers. Make sure your agent follows these tips to get great looking pictures to make your house stand out from the competition.

You’d be surprised how bad some MLS photos look. Many MLS pictures do not do the featured house justice. If your agent uses a pocket-sized camera with a built-in flash or worse yet, a phone camera to take pictures of your house, you are in trouble.

The biggest problem with pocket-sized cameras and phone cameras is the size and power of their built-in flash. A flash on a small camera can light up only about 6 – 10 feet of area in front of the flash. A phone’s flash is capable of even less. For a portrait of a person, this is okay, but for a large room there’s no way that’s going to be enough light. The resulting picture will make your room look dark and shadowy. That’s not a selling feature.

When I take pictures of properties for sale or rent, I use a Nikon D70 digital SLR (single lens reflex) camera with a wide angle lens, top mount strobe flash and tripod. Don’t forget the tripod. This setup produces great results.

Here are some photography tricks that work... READ ENTIRE ARTICLE TO FIND OUT HOW TO TAKE THE BEST MLS PICTURES FOR YOUR CLIENT'S LISTING>>>>

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Eric Reid

Renaissance Realty Group of Keller Williams Atlanta Partners - Lawrenceville, GA

I have seen so many BAD picture or better yet no pictures on Unsold listings..

Aug 21, 2009 03:07 PM

Bill Petrey

AgentHarvest - A Real Estate Agent Finder Service - Dallas, TX

I agree. When buying real estate for personal investment, my best buy so far was from a homeowner that paid an agent just to list it on MLS and do nothing more. It sat there for almost a year with NO picture. She thought she was saving money. Turns out she did... she saved my money! Don't think that was her original intention.

Aug 21, 2009 03:11 PM

Monika Depalo

GAFF'S REFERRAL'S INC. - Port Orange, FL

REAL ESTATE Agent/Stager

There are companies that just go out and take pictures and today I met a man that does drawings by using the picture and turning it into a color or black and white sketch.

Aug 21, 2009 03:15 PM

Monika:

That sounds neat, but in my MLS, most artist renderings mean pre-construction. I also saw an ad for virtual staging where the photographer takes a picture of an empty room and imposes computer enhanced furniture in it. I think that could be great for empty homes. Beats lugging furniture around.

Aug 21, 2009 03:25 PM

John Novak

Keller Williams Realty The Marketplace - Las Vegas, NV

Henderson, Las Vegas and Summerlin Real Estate

Hi Bill - Too often agents don't pay attention to the entire frame. In your example, if the agent would have taken just a few steps closer to the driveway they could have eliminated the telephone pole and car from the shot and gotten a much better picture of the home.

Aug 21, 2009 03:32 PM

John:

Don't forget the tires and broken bottles laying in the yard. I forgot to mention on my post that this was an example of a BAD picture. I have another picture of the same house cropped correctly and where the trees and brush was tamed and boarded windows opened. The "after" picture looks much better. It's at the bottom of the article at http://blog.agentharvest.com. You have to click on Continue Reading to see it.

Aug 21, 2009 03:42 PM

Bob & Carolin Benjamin

Benjamin Realty LLC - Gold Canyon, AZ

East Phoenix Arizona Homes

There are a lot of bad photos on the MLS -- makes the good ones really stand out.

Aug 21, 2009 04:50 PM

Benjamin Clark

Homebuyer Representation, Inc. - Salt Lake City, UT

Buyer's Agent - Certified Negotiation Expert

Hey Bill. I especially liked how you used a 2MB file scaled down to <200x200. Bet that's one of the 12 things wrong with it, right?

Mar 04, 2010 04:30 AM

Sonja Adams

Keller Williams Realty - Purcellville, VA

what kind of wide angle lense do you suggest? Great post...thanks!

Mar 04, 2010 11:38 PM

Sonja:

Any SLR mounted wide angle lens will work. I use a Nikon 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6 AF-G wide angle lens on my Nikon D70 digital camera. It's a general purpose lens and usually the one good lens I like to carry when travelling light on vacation. Just remember to be careful when using a wide-angle lens. It must be used with a tripod when photographing indoors to keep it level. If you're angle is off by a slight amount, it distorts straight lines, making them converge. A wide-angle lens without a tripod makes any house look like it has foundation problems if you're not careful.

Just don't forget about the strobe flash capable of producing enought light. That's the most important tip I can think of.

Mar 05, 2010 02:04 AM

Are Your MLS Pictures Preventing Your House From Selling?

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