Hiring a Professional Photographer for Listings Pays Off.
Its easy to under estimate the value of professional photography when trying to selling your property.
By using professional photography you’re not ‘just showing’ your home or investment, you are marketing it to maximise expose, generate more interest and create competition among buyers and other properties.
According to NAR, (National Association of Realtors) 89% of all home buyers shop online for their home. As a result, the way your listings look online is one of the most important factors in generating buyer interest. Their Studies show that listings with professional photos generate an average of 139% more clicks when compared to similar listings without professional photos. Source: www.realtor.org The study below done by Redfin’s research center shows property listings shot using a professional photographer and professional equipment sell for more money.
For homes listed between $200,000 and $1 million, Redfin found that homes with listing photos taken with DSLR cameras sell for $3,400 to $11,200 more relative to their list prices. At the high end of the spectrum, professionally photographed homes for more than $1 million sold at prices similar to those with amateur photographs. In Los Angeles, Redfin real estate agent Eric Tan says, “professional photography and even photo post-processing are expected on million dollar homes.” While million dollar homes take longer to sell, DSLR photography still helps these luxury homes sell faster than than they otherwise would.
DSLR Photos = More Money, Less Problems (Selling)
Across all price tiers, homes with DSLR photography were more likely to sell within six months than homes with point-and-shoot photos. In the $400,000 to $500,000 price range, 64 percent of homes with DSLR photos sold within six months, compared to 46 percent of homes with point-and-shoot photos. For those difficult-to-sell million dollar homes, 35 percent of professionally photographed homes sold in six months, compared to 30 percent of homes with point-and-shoot photos.
Sell Your Home in a Snap
Since professionally photographed homes are more likely to sell in general, and to sell for more money, it’s not surprising that these homes also sell faster. Because online searching and browsing is such a critical part of the home-buying process, it follows that a better-photographed home will sell faster because more people are enticed to visit the home and people know what they are getting before they even set foot in the home. Across all price ranges, homes with professional photos sold faster. In the million dollar range, professionally photographed homes sold four days faster, and those in the $400,000 range sold three weeks faster than their counterparts with amateur photos.
Look Sharp, Get More
For this latest study, Redfin dug a little deeper, looking at photo sharpness. Photo sharpness can be thought of as detail added to a picture by using a good camera, lens and lighting. Whether it’s a crisp reflection in a mirror, or bright flowers in the front yard, a sharper picture will show a house in its best light. We used some fancy math and image processing via OpenCV to group our photos by a sharpness percentile. The sharpest 10 percent of photos sold at or above list price 44 percent of the time, while listings with average sharpness sold at or above list just 13 percent of the time.
