There are major benefits to using a professional photographer for both listing agents and for the home owners. For Home Owners, study after study has shown that you are more likely to sell your home sooner and for a higher price. If you are a homeowner and you want to get top dollar for your home, you should INSIST that your real estate agent uses a professional photographer to photograph your home. Letting the agent take photos of YOUR HOUSE with their cell phone could cost you tens of thousands of dollars in lost sales value.
Why Agents Should Use A Professional Photographer
Listing agents benefit from using professional photography in three major ways. Namely, they can help you to get more listings, get paid sooner, and generate more prospects and leads. Great photographs of your listings convey to potential clients that you CARE about marketing your clients’ homes. (Notice how nearly ALL the top agents in Marin County use a pro to photograph their listings? That’s part of the reason they became a top agent.)
Get More Listings
First, you are going to have a better chance of getting NEW listings when you use a pro to photograph your CURRENT listings. Won’t potential clients be more likely to hire YOU as their listing agent if you can show them beautiful photos of your previous listings? And certainly it will be easier to justify your commission if you can show them how beautifully you will market their house.
In short, by having better looking photos in your previous listings, you will have an advantage over agents competing for that listing who have only poor photos of past listings. The home owner will see that you are willing to go the extra mile to market their house.
Get Paid Sooner
Second, you are more likely to get your commission check sooner – up to three weeks sooner, according to an annual survey by Redfin Realty – and less likely to have the house fall out of contract. In a study on listings with professional photography compared to listings with non-professional photos, Redfin Realty found that houses with better photographs sell up to 21 days quicker than those with poorer photographs.
“Across all price ranges, homes with professional photos sold faster.”
Get More Prospects
And the third benefit is that you will get more prospects and more leads – and that is going to give you an advantage in getting more clients. When people see your name and number on an MLS listing or flier that has beautiful photos, won’t they be more likely to contact you for your services than if your name appears next to a bunch of low-quality photos?
Let’s face it: As an agent, the real benefit of marketing a listing is that it helps to market yourself as a listing or buying agent, right? The top real estate agents all know that marketing their listings means Marketing Themselves and Building Their Brand! That’s why they have their listings professionally photographed. Shouldn’t you build YOUR BRAND the way top producing agents do? Or do you want YOUR BRAND to be associated with dark, blurry snapshots?
“Agents making over $100,000 a year SPEND TEN TIMES MORE ON MARKETING than agents making UNDER $40K per year. Which group do you want to belong in?”
Still not convinced that professional photography will help you be a better agent? Think about this; as a listing agent, you have a fiduciary duty to the home seller. You are supposed to help them from undue financial harm. Does any agent want to be sued by a client because the listing agent failed to help the seller get top dollar for their home because of unprofessional photographs?
Benefits For Home Owners:
Whether you are selling your house yourself (FSBO), or whether you are having a Realtor sell your house, you are more likely to get more money for your house, according to a recent Redfin Realty Study. But aside from the increased selling price, Redfin also found that homes with professional photos are 50% more likely to sell within six months of being listed when compared to homes with non-professional photos.
Instead of investing large amounts of money on remodelling that will most likely not recoup your investment, why not make a minor investment in something much more likely to put more money in your pocket?
So if you are looking to sell faster and for more money, then call us today to help you get the most from your sale. And if you are already working with a real estate agent or brokerage company, then insist that they hire a professional photographer. They will pay for the photos, so you won’t have any additional expenses.
Contact Us Today To Get Mouth-Watering Photos Of Your Home Listing! Call Us Today At (415) 722-3831
We Guarantee You Will Love The Photos Or You Don’t Pay A Thing!
Why Use Mark Romero at Marin Home Photography?
Simple: We Help YOU Look Like A SUPER-AGENT In Your Client’s Eyes!
We recently photographed a home in Southern Novato. Within two weeks, the listing agent had received 23 offers and the house had over 21,000 views on Zillow!!! The offer that they accepted was for $140K OVER THE ASKING PRICE!!!
Wouldn’t you like to have been that agent?
Wouldn’t it make prospecting for clients easier if you were able to tell them a success story like that?
Although we delight in making photographic magic, we enjoy even more making YOU look like the best real estate agent in your office. We quickly deliver beautiful photos in the right format to upload to the MLS or use in print advertisements. We provide the quality of images that helps you justify your commission in the eyes of your clients. Just as a home seller would want you to be dressed professionally when hosting their open house, they want you to have quality, professional images of their home posted in their MLS listing.
We promise to:
- Be on time
- Provide you with digital images ready for the MLS within 24 to 48 hours
- Edit all photos to improve the lighting and clarity
- Take multiple photos of the same scene for enhanced Blending and HDR imaging
- Provide photos in the proper size and resolution to upload to the MLS quickly and easily
- Be courteous and professional with you, your support staff, and the homeowners
- Be dressed professionally
- Pick up after ourselves
- Avoid damaging the home or garden in any way
- Return items to their original places if they have to be moved temporarily
We know that home owners are impatient. They wait to the last minute to finally list their house, and then they expect YOU to stop everything else you are doing and have everything done for them immediately. To help you out, we have a 24 to 48 hour turnaround time for delivering MLS-ready images to you. Please understand that anything faster than that would potentially cause the quality of the images to suffer.
It’s one thing to have the right camera, lenses, and lighting equipment; it’s another thing to know how to use it. And yet another skill to be able to post-process the images with programs like Photoshop, Lightroom, Enfuse, so that they are dynamic, yet realistic. You will receive images that are crisp and clear without being so overly bright that the supposedly romantic bedroom looks like a dentist’s office.
Maybe you are one of those real estate agents who likes the High Dynamic Range (HDR) look. That’s fine with us. When we are on location, we shoot extra photos at multiple exposures so that IF you want an HDR look, we can easily do that for you in post-processing.
As for how the photos will look on the Internet or in print, you can rest assured that no matter how you intend to use the images, you will get the right dimensions and resolutions that you need. Many other photographers provide photos that are too small to take full advantage of the MLS listings. When we optimize pictures for the web (whether for the MLS, Facebook, email, or your website) , they will load quickly and yet retain their beauty. And as for printing, some other photographers charge extra for sizes in a resolution high enough for printing. We don’t.
The last thing that you want to do is pick up after a photographer or any other service provider who enters your clients home. Not to worry; we take pride in making sure that the home is as clean as when we entered and anything that we have to move to improve the appearance of the photography is put back in its rightful place.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us either by phone at (415) 722-3831 or by email at mark@marinhomephotography.com and we will be happy to speak with you.