Importance of Photography in a Down Real Estate Market

Selling things is all about finding a way to stand out from the competition. In a down real estate market like we have now, the competition home sellers face are those hundreds of other homes for sale in the same location and price range. The last thing a home seller wants to do is to have to lower their price to stand out from the competition.

Selling things is all about finding a way to stand out from the competition. In a down real estate market like we have now, the competition home sellers face are those hundreds of other homes for sale in the same location and price range. The last thing a home seller wants to do is to have to lower their price to stand out from the competition.

Stunning photography is another effective way to stand out from the crowd at any given price point. Think for a minute what the few qualified buyers these days are doing. When they search online for a home in a given location and price range they end up seeing a list of homes with some version of the external primary photo along with few other details. This list of homes has a link to get to more details and photos of each home.

This makes the primary external photo of the property enormously important! It’s used to capture the buyers interest and get them to click a link to see more details and more photos. Once they get the page with more details and more photo of the property what do you think they do first? What would you do? They browse through the photos right? The more photos the better? There have been studies that document the fact that having more photos reduces market time and increases net selling price of a property.

So in a down market, here’s how to use photography to stand out from the crowd:

1. Make sure that primary external photo is a striking, effective image that grabs attention and creates interest. This will entice buyers to look in more detail at the property.
2. Use the maximum number of strong images allowed by your MLS or local broker site.
3. Use virtual tours, slide shows, videos or whatever you can to visually present the property in an interesting way.

In summary, strong photography is one of the few alternatives that agents and home sellers have to make their marketing of a property standout from the competition other than reducing the price.