A $200,000 Bottle of Aspirin
- Posted by TourBuzz Fellow on November 10, 2011 at 7:24pm
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Picture this: The buzz of people and the hum of electricity. A bright glow emanating from a virtual army of lighting, stands and umbrellas. Two days of planning, test-shots and hard work to produce the perfect photograph. Finally a photograph worthy of the subject - a $2 bottle of aspirin.
That's right, friends - a bottle of aspirin. A colleague of mine who is now a real estate agent used to make a living in Hollywood as a studio lighting technician. He explained to me how they would spend hours or even days, not to mention a lot of money, lighting something as insignificant as that bottle of aspirin. "How funny," he said, "that people don't think high-quality professional photography of even a $200,000 home is absolutely necessary to make it a competitive offering in today's market."
I'm sure we've all seen the rushed "iPhone photos" looking through the various online or print ads for real estate. How can a multi-thousand dollar home not be worthy of good photography at least as much as a $2 bottle of aspirin? The answer -- it is! With a little bit of training, a lot of practice and some basic equipment you can have as much fun as I do making a beautiful photograph. A photograph that captures the attention of a real estate agent or future buyer while they blow right by the dozens of other photographs of homes that nobody cared about enough to make them stand out.
This is what I love to do. To take something ordinary and make it extra-ordinary. Perfect? - Far from it!! I simply hope that by sharing my experience with others, I can not only enrich their lives and businesses, but can also add value to the industry as a whole. Value that will ultimately help generate more revenue per photo and more business overall as we learn to take our photography and virtual tour marketing to the next level.
Making Every Pixel Count
| New York Times Real Estate |
Left, Lucie Thompson; right, Robert Bradley
PLAYING THE ANGLES
Lucie Thompson, an agent at the Corcoran Group in Palm Beach, Fla.,
photographed a house on Jupiter Island, left.
The company later hired a professional photographer, Robert Brantley,
to shoot the same house. The results, right, speak for themselves.
Making Every Pixel Count
In real estate, a picture can be worth more than a thousand words. Much, much more. When selling properties online, agents and Web designers say that the pictures buyers see of houses and apartments for sale are often the first — and sometimes the only — chance for a seller to make a good impression. Less-than-flattering pictures can turn buyers off and lead to lonely open houses.
Top, Meredieth Maxfield; bottom, Lauren Brown
MORE DEPTH AND CONTEXT Meredith Maxfield, a sales associate with the Briggs-Freeman Real Estate Brokerage in Dallas, took the top picture of this dining room. Then she brought in Lauren Brown, a professional photographer, who stepped back to show the archway and staircase in the adjoining hall.
“Good photos will grab people’s attention and help you sell a home,” said Jacky Teplitzky, an executive vice president of Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate in New York. “Bad pictures will absolutely give you trouble, because you won’t have any calls on it, and nobody will come to see it.”
Eighty percent of people across the country who bought a new home last year used the Internet while house hunting, and they rated photographs as the most useful tool in their search, according to a survey of buyers and sellers by the National Association of Realtors. The survey also found that 24 percent of home buyers got their first glimpses of their new homes on the Web, up from a mere 2 percent in 1997.
In many cases, it is the agents themselves who are snapping the pictures and posting them on the agency Web site. Because of this, it is important that sellers choosing an agent know who will take and pay for the pictures and whether a professional photographer is available.
“It’s so important to have photos that are professionally presented,” said Rosalind Clarke, a senior sales associate with the Corcoran Group in Palm Beach, Fla.
She added that she uses only pictures taken by professional photographers, because “if things look shoddy or unprofessional, not only are buyers going to find the property unappealing, they’re going to associate you with being shoddy and unprofessional.”
Real estate agents who represent large and expensive homes say that virtual tours, which to provide a 360-degree view of a room, are another crucial tool for attracting buyers. “They’re a really great way of seeing a property without actually being there,” said Meredith Maxfield, a sales associate with the Briggs-Freeman Real Estate Brokerage in Dallas. “Buyers use them to narrow out the properties they would absolutely not want to see.”
The Realtors’ association survey found that when it comes to Web features that buyers considered “very useful,” 83 percent cited pictures, 81 percent cited detailed property information and 60 percent cited virtual tours.
New York City is something of an anomaly in this case. Real estate agents here generally agree that floor plans are more useful than virtual tours, because understanding the way rooms flow within an apartment’s limited space is often more important than getting a panorama of any single room.
But there is little point in having good photographs or beautifully written prose describing a home if you don’t have a Web site that is easy to find and easy to use — and this holds true whether you’re using a broker who will list your home on an agency Web site or you’re trying to sell your home yourself and are creating your own Web site or listing your home on a site like Craigslist.
“The key to any successful Web site is to make it easy to find what you want; otherwise, the user will just go away,” said Staci Roberts Beam, the director of Web communications at Northwestern University. “So in the case of a real estate site, make sure the architecture of the site tells you that even if it takes three or four clicks, you’ll eventually get to see an affordable house in a place where you might want to live.”
The Pictures
Unless you are selling your home yourself, your real estate agent will ultimately decide which photographs will go up on the agency’s Web site, but agencies vary greatly in their policies on pictures. Some send their agents and brokers out armed with digital cameras, but others use only pictures taken by professionals. Still other agencies let brokers decide whether to take their own pictures or pay a fee to use the agency’s recommended photographers.
All of which explains why there is such a wide range in the quality of photos found on real estate Web sites.
“When you look at the difference between professional photos and ones taken by brokers with digital cameras, it’s not hard to see that you get what you pay for,” said Lauren Cangiano, a senior vice president of Halstead Property in New York.
Halstead uses only professional photos, and its agents reimburse the agency from their commissions after the properties have sold. The same pictures will be used on information sheets, in the agency’s storefront windows and in advertising brochures.
Magazine article on Real Estate Photography
An article by Jeff Kent called SHOW and SELL
If a property’s photography isn’t exciting online,
it’ll never lure potential buyers.
Good lighting and HDRi
90% of all business originate from online listings.
Proper staging and HDR imaging will turn high-end
properties rapidly.
I. Watson is quoted in the article
“ My approach is to show in the best possible light.
Most real estate photography just documents the
property. I want to create an emotional attachment
that spurs people to want more”.
HDR imaging is especially suited for high-end properties.
Realtor’s Guide to Using Photos in Real Estate Marketing
Realtor’s Guide to Using Photos in Real Estate Marketing
Photographs are a central component of marketing a property. The primary function that photos perform is to get prospective buyers to come look at the property. In today’s market where 87% or more home buyers start their home search online a little thumbnail of the front of the property becomes the first reason buyers choose to look at more photos of your listing over the 20 others at the same price and location. Great interior photos in turn become the reason a buyer chooses to come look at your listing instead of the others. As pointed out by Vivian Toy, in her classic February, 2007 New York Times article, Making Every Pixel Count,“a picture can be worth more than a thousand words, much, much more.” But there are even more compelling reasons for using great photography to present your listing:
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