A good friend of mine just bought her dream house and is looking for renters for the smaller house that she owns and has been living in for two years. She signed up with a real estate agency to advertise her rental, and while talking to them on the phone, asked if they had a decent camera with a wide-angle lens.
You see, nothing is more annoying to my friend (and thousands of others who peruse property ads) than amateur photos that show only one corner of the room and give no sense of the scale or dynamics of the property.
“Oh yes,” the agent gushed “We’re renowned for our photography, and we’ve got a wide-angle lens.”
Well, not only did they not have a wide angle lens, but the photographs they took did not show off the property very well at all, generally making it seem much smaller than it actually is. I should know, because I’ve spent many an evening around there drinking wine and playing Settlers of Catan.
Here’s a lesson I would like everyone to learn: Real Estate Agents are Not Photographers – no matter what they tell you.
Good real estate photography isn’t about trying to make rooms look bigger than they really are, but about showing how the areas and laid out and what features they contain. For example, my friend’s bedroom has two separate built-in wardrobes, room for a chest of drawers and laundry hamper, a huge bay window overlooking the front garden, and access to an adjoining sunroom.
And here’s the photo the real estate agent took to show off the bedroom and all its features:
It looks tiny, like you can only fit a bed in and nothing else, and it also looks like there’s only one wardrobe. Obviously whoever took the photos was limited by the angle of view and could only fit in a small part of the room. But even so, they didn’t bother to take multiple images to at least show off the rest of the room.
So, my friend asked if I could photograph the house so she could make a new ad. Not only did I use a wide-angle lens to show off the rooms (the Canon 17-40mm f4 from the pro L series), I used some simple bounce flash (with the 580 EX II) to ensure the rooms were well illuminated. A bit of perspective correction and sharpening was added in post, and the photos were correctly resized for web to preserve their sharpness and ‘snap’.
Here are the photos I created of the bedroom:
Using the new snazzier house photos, my friend was able to put together a MUCH more attractive ad for her rental property, and ran it on the same real estate website as the original agent’s ad. Interestingly, the agent’s ad had already been up for a week and they’d had nobody interested in looking at the house. My friend put up her own ad with the new photos one day after lunch and within a few hours she had 3 different people booked in to view it that evening.
If you own a property and are looking to rent it or sell it, either hire a professional photographer (and not your wedding photographer, but one that specialises in interiors!) – OR be adamant that your agent uses a professional photographer. If you think the agent’s photos aren’t up to scratch, tell them so and organise a photographer yourself.
Here’s the photos of my friend’s property – both the original agent photos and the new ones I created. Which house looks more enticing? (all photos are shown at the actual size they appeared online. I resized my images to exactly fit the image frame size of the website on which the ad was to appear)
Exterior and front yard:
Agent photos
Photographer Photos:
Lounge
Agent photo
Photographer photo
Dining area
Agent photo
Photographer photos
Kitchen
Agent photo
Photographer photo
Second bedroom
Agent photo
Photographer photos
Bathroom
Agent photos
Photographer photos:
About the Author
July 8th, 2010 at 7:24 pm
very impressive! i hope that agent reads this and learns something.
i guess one thing you forgot to mention – you cared about the outcome and for the agent it was just another house and the guy who took the pictures was tired and wanted to get home or something. like i always say: if you care for the stuff you photograph – it shows.
anyway, very nice work. i can see myself living in the house you photographed but i would never think of living in the “other” house
July 9th, 2010 at 2:06 am
Great photos, Sharon.
You need to turn this round into a positive sales feature for selling houses.
Explain to the real estate people and to home owners that decent photos can give a bigger lift to a home than spending $1000s on re-decoration.
This is the key – I know loads of people who have spent big on re-decorating to sell their home then just hoped that crummy photos would get the buyers in.
Really push the value that good photos bring. How good photos bring good buyers and get a better price.
Do you have different “home photo packages” to give some idea of how much you charge ?
July 9th, 2010 at 9:45 am
Hi John,
Thanks for your comment. You are so on the money when you point out that people can spend big money on redecorating in order to sell their house, yet fall short when it comes to getting fantastic photos to then market the place. Marketing is everything, and photos speak much more strongly than even the best write-up can do.
I have a friend who got an estimate for the market value of her house from a leading agent. She had her partner (a professional photographer) take the photos and she made her own online ad – and she sold the house in just ONE DAY for THOUSANDS more than what the agent expected to get for it.
I don’t currently offer ‘packages’ for real estate photography – I actually specialize more in promotional photography for commercial/hospitality venues – but of course am happy to provide a quote to anyone interested in getting some top-notch marketing pictures
July 9th, 2010 at 9:53 am
Hi there Torsten and thanks for your comment.
You’re very right – I DID care about producing a good outcome. And I think it’s fair enough to expect that a real estate agent will never ‘care’ as much about the photography side of things as a photograher does (or should!)
I try to bring that sensibility to all the jobs I do, and part of that is taking on work that I truly care about – which for me generally falls into the ‘promotional’ side of things, but of course this has to be balanced by the fact that sometimes you need to take on work to pay the bills. My personal ethic is that no matter what the job or how big it is, I strive to produce the best possible work for my clients – small things often lead to bigger things, and doing amazing work on the smaller jobs is an investment in your skills and reputation (if not your bank account
)
July 9th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
I would also add that the dream house we bought also had bad photos, so unsurprisingly we were the only offer the vendors had! the photos didn’t do the house justice at all. They were low res and grainy and made the rooms look smaller than they were. In that price range it is unbelievable that they didn’t get a professional!
July 9th, 2010 at 6:01 pm
We’ll have to fly you up to Wellington when we sell our house. It’s really hard to believe that these photos are of the same house!
July 9th, 2010 at 6:22 pm
Well, if we keep an eye on Grabaseat and it might be worthwhile! ;-P
July 16th, 2010 at 2:03 pm
These photos are like night and day! Well done Sharon.
July 19th, 2010 at 9:05 pm
Very nice indeed. I wish I had your skills.
July 24th, 2010 at 3:53 am
I have to admit that the pictures you have taken are way better than the ones of the agency. Anyway from my experience many RE agencies hire professional photographers to take the pictures. It just depend on who you hire to sell/rent your house.