Professional Photography – Critical For Making A Great First Impression
January 28, 2019
You only get one chance to make a great first impression. Most buyers use the internet to search for their home. Bad photos can really hurt your efforts to sell your home. Often buyers won’t even bother to look at homes that don’t show well online.
When marketing a home for sale, I use a mix of my pictures and professional photos. I usually work with a seller several weeks or months in advance. So I can take pictures of their property when the lighting and weather cooperates. Many of my pictures turn out pretty nice. But, in challenging situations, I also rely on a professional photographer. This is like playing “best ball” golf where I use the best of my pictures and the best of the professional pictures.
Professional photographers use two techniques to handle challenging lighting. The first is fill flash. They can setup a triggering device on their camera and position external flashes throughout the home to light up darker areas. This gives a very natural and balanced look.
The second technique is called high dynamic range (HDR) photography. The photographer actually takes several pictures using various shutter and aperture settings. Each exposure will have an area that looks really nice. Then they use editing software to digitally mix and match the various components to come up with a single picture incorporating the best of the exposures.
Both techniques also have the benefit of digital “enhancing”. You have to be careful with this. You cannot misrepresent a property. But, in the summer, if your grass is a little brown and crunchy, you can digitally make it greener again. And they can digitally make the skies blue if it happens to be overcast on the day they took pictures. For interior shots, you can have them add flames to the fireplace.
A professional photographer charges roughly $300 for 20 or so high resolution photographs. Depending on the property, it is often advantageous to use a drone to capture the features of a neighborhood or the vast size of a farm from an aerial perspective. Adding drone pictures or video can increase the price to roughly $500. (If you list your home with me, I pay for a professional photographer. The modest cost is well worth it.)
Once you have these professional pictures, your real estate agent can upload them to the MLS. Here in Washington, the NWMLS limits us to 25 pictures. Your real estate agent can also use the pictures to make a virtual tour. This can let buyers feel like they are standing in the street looking at the home, seeing the community playground, see the mountain or ocean view from the backyard, or see the property from an aerial drone shot. I have had buyers purchase a home sight unseen just based on my virtual tour. Go to this link to see a virtual tour of my rental home I sold summer 2018. www.tourfactory.com/2023403
Definitely consider using professional pictures when marketing your home for sale. (Also see my 14 January 2019 blog for 12 other tips to get top dollar when selling your home.) And, if you can sucker your real estate agent into paying for the professional photos, you can’t even complain about the price!