Blog

By : Ted Guarnero

By Josh F. Sanders

I’ve done it myself; taken what I thought were great listing pictures and used them for my online MLS listing. My clients thought they were fine and I thought they were just fine, until I started working as a buyer’s agent in Seattle a few years back.

I worked with over 40 different buyers a week and everyday I’d hear, “Did you see those listing pictures? There’s no way we want to see that house, it’s a dump! Does the listing agent know how bad they are?” Obviously, the listing agent didn’t spend anything on real estate photography.

My buyers would also see some great listing photos and want to get in to see the home that afternoon. We’d step inside and they’d wonder if it was the same home they saw online. They felt cheated because the pictures were nothing like the real home. (but at least the listing agent got buyers walking through the house).

It all came down to the listing pictures they saw online. That’s essential marketing for listings! Give buyers a great picture and they’ll jump inside the house that day. Give them a “do-it-yourself” picture and they’ll move onto the next home. The listing pictures make the difference, especially when you spend a few bucks on professional real estate photography!

Even when the listing pictures were better than the actual house, guess what? It still got the buyers inside! That’s your goal as a listing agent; get as many showings as possible. Professional real estate photography makes that happen.

With upwards of 80%+ of buyers looking online now, the listing photos are the first thing they’re looking at and basing their initial impressions on.

How much money in lost commissions do you think you’re missing because you won’t spend a couple hundred bucks for professional real estate photography?

If you did spend the well invested marketing dollars on some professional real estate photography…….

1. You could have more satisfied clients because the home sold faster.
2. You could have made more cash because you didn’t have to drop the sales price when the listing became stale on the market.
3. You could look like a top producer in the area because of the quicker sales, better looking listings and more satisfied clients. Your overall image is enhanced, big time!

Isn’t it funny how such a small aspect of your business can affect the whole thing? Anytime you realize how one issue affects your net profits, that’ll make you perk up, right?

Now don’t give me the excuse that it’s too expensive because it’s not. Look at it as a marketing and advertising expense because that’s exactly what it is. And real estate photography is one of the best things you can spend your marketing dollars on.

You have a couple options……..

You could grab a professional in real estate photography in your local area and offer them $50-$200 to come to your listing and take some fabulous photos. Make sure they’re top notch, have all the right equipment and understand the goal of these photos. You don’t want to pay for real estate photography that’s no better than your own.

Your other option is to go with a company like Vicaso.com who does real estate photography exclusively. Their business is listing photos for real estate agents!

You can schedule your photo shoot on their website, pay about $200 or so and get the most captivating listing photos you’ll ever see. Even if you have a crack house listed for sale, their real estate photography will make it look like a palace.

I’m telling you; don’t skimp on your real estate photography. Look at the cost as an investment. If you spent $200 on professional real estate photography and got back another $20,000 in commissions that year from faster sales, more clients, and higher listing prices, wouldn’t that be worth it? You betcha!

David Paler purposefully strode through the cloud-nipping stretches of an $8.25 million Manhattan apartment, took in the set before him and called out demands with the directorial authority of Martin Scorsese. Then he assumed his position behind his camera, nodded in satisfaction and began shooting away.

While Mr. Paler may not be a renowned filmmaker or the favored photographer of the model Gisele Bündchen, his work is as scrutinized and touched up as any feature film or Vogue shoot. Mr. Paler photographs apartments for sales and rental listings.

These photographs, the real estate equivalent of head shots, are the bait that lure buyers to Sunday open houses. When these photos work, they help buyers picture themselves holding parties in their dining rooms.

Brokers hope that these photos will persuade bidders to pay more. At their worst, they invite derision for trivialities like a preponderance of throw pillows, causing buyers to move on to other listings.

“They’re huge,” said Suzanne Johansson, a broker who is selling an apartment at 111 West 67th Street that Mr. Paler was photographing. Photographs, she said, determined whether buyers were “going to be interested or not.”

It does not take much time with a real estate photographer to learn how deceptively hard taking marketable shots can be. Mr. Paler compares some shoots to “diplomatic missions” where you are “walking on egg shells.” Even at a professionally designed apartment like the West 67th Street home, Mr. Paler negotiated with two brokers and a stylist about dragging an elaborate dog bed out of a shot, moving around chairs and risking the safety of the selling family’s pet frog by unplugging its tank.

He tensely called for colorful items like plants and cookbooks to enliven the apartment’s neutral shades and added a basket of lemons in a photo because, “Lemon fresh — it’s psychological.” (He turned down a stylist’s offer to add a Buddha.) Toilets and trash baskets never stay in the picture. Through the shoot, he periodically glanced up at the horizon to track the ominous, chalky clouds. He would brighten skies later by combining shots and adding in light. In this market, he said, sellers and brokers were especially concerned that photos were flawless.

“It’s very acute right now,” he said. “Brokers are the psychiatrists. We’re kind of like the psychiatrists to the psychiatrists.”

Some of these photographers, not surprisingly, also do fashion and magazine work, but a few focus on only real estate. They are paid by brokers, and their fees vary, but a typical two-hour assignment, including travel time, may cost $250 for four published shots, and editing may take one more hour.

Caryn Leigh Posnansky has spent the last 16 months shooting apartments for sale, ranging in price from $250,000 to $19 million, for VHT, a Chicago-based real estate photo agency. Her less glamorous assignments have included scooping soap out of New Yorkers’ soap dishes and persuading one seller to throw away the bouncy chair he kept for his 3-year-old.

At a 19th-floor studio at 150 West End Avenue, she found herself with plenty of clutter to clear. The apartment had a renter who was less concerned about making the place listing-ready. Ms. Posnansky and a Corcoran broker, Sheila McCarthy, feverishly moved around books, took out recycling, removed mementos from the refrigerator and even pushed a desk chair into the hallway to present the portrait of a pristine and uncluttered apartment. After capturing her shots, Ms. Posnansky returned every book, magnet, fortune cookie and dead plant to its original location.

“They’ll never know we were here,” she chirped while wheeling a desk chair back into the apartment.

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

Some photographers spend more time physically transforming spaces. When Nico Arellano, a former set stylist from Uruguay, came in to photograph an eighth-floor, $2.3 million three-bedroom at 530 East 72nd Street, he realized that a couch and a pair of chairs swallowed up the space and did not show how large the living room actually was. Mr. Arellano, with help from two Halstead brokers, Ann Bialek and Madalyn Robbins, moved an entire living room of furniture. He would later edit the flat-screen television out of the shot.

“Sometimes we literally just change everything around,” he said.

There are more technical ways to make, say, a Lilliputian bedroom look merely small: using a wide-angle lens to fit the entire room into a single photo, or shooting the room at an angle from a corner rather than straight on.

“The wide angle is a must,” Mr. Arellano said. “The corner thing is my preference.”

Even a meticulously kept $1.15 million one-bedroom at 39 East 12th Street, with an accepted offer no less, benefited from a little magic. Its Halstead broker, Jane Greenberg, said that in this market she did not want to take any chances. So she hired Jay Bierach to take additional photographs highlighting the renovated windows and kitchen. On a recent overcast morning, Mr. Bierach wheeled in his camera and lights. For nearly an hour he snapped away and tried to add light with camera and flashes. Then he wrapped it up. He would have to find more sunshine back at his studio.

“I try to use as much daylight as possible,” he said. “I do what they want, and then I do what I need to do.”