Photos are the single most important marketing tool a listing agent currently has. Over 90% of all home searches now begin on the Internet. Buyers are sorting through the listing inventory on the basis of the pictures.
I used to always take my own pictures. I had a fish-eye lense and a good camera. I got relatively good pictures. Then I became friends with a professional photographer, Sean. He is one of the few people who has ever taken a good picture of me. I am one of those people who doesn't take good pictures. Sean tells me that when people tell him that, he knows that it isn't the actual face that matters but the expressions. What he does is that he gets those people to tell him stories and he snaps the pictures as their facial expressions move through the story-telling process and viola, good pictures are the result.
Sean and I decided that we would try using him on my listings. Up until he started doing it for me, Sean hadn't really done much in the way of house pictures. The first few times he took pictures of my listings, he did a nice job. The pictures were clearly better than any I had taken. Sean understands light much better than I do and he could get the exposures right. Once he started, I knew that there wasn't going to be any going back to my doing the pictures myself.
Then, one day something really remarkable happened. Sean phoned me after he had shot the pictures for a townhouse listing. He told me how much he really liked the place. He said that he could actually see himself living in that space. He sent me the pictures. I turned them into the back office to upload into MLS. The listing coordinator phoned me to talk about her buying the place. She had been working with another agent to find a home for her to buy. She told me that she trying to figure out if that townhouse might work for her. I really didn't think much about that phone call at the time. But, when I got the second phone call like that, this one from another agent in my office, I knew we were on to something.
And, of course, what had happened is thast Sean had managed to subconsciously transfer his love and appreciation for the townhouse into the pictures. The pictures had emotional content, subliminal emotional content. His emotional reaction to the townhouse showed up in the pictures. Having found the "sweet spot" with the townhouse, he has managed to do it with other listings since then. And, that is why I use a professional.
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