Ever wonder why one home will sell for more than a similar home in the same neighborhood? You’ll hear all sorts of reasons. One house has this feature or that feature while the other one doesn’t. That’s part of it but certainly not all.
The reality is that the more people you can show your home to, the greater the chances of finding someone willing to pay your asking price (or more). We live in the information age. Buyers do their research on the Internet. If your home doesn’t look good on a computer, chances are people are not going to come see it in person. If they don’t see it in person, they won’t buy it. I shudder to think how many people never visit a home that they would have loved simply because it didn’t show well on the computer.
I offer a service here in Phoenix to assist REALTORS® in marketing their listings. Part of my service is to take pictures of the property. Most REALTORS® think taking snapshots with an iPhone is all that’s needed. When no fish bite, they ask you to lower the price. Now you’re selling on price and not quality. In many cases that’s where the price difference comes from.
I figure the best way to demonstrate this is to show you a real-life example. The day the REALTOR® got this listing, she took some photos herself to put on MLS. She then contacted me to schedule a time to take better photos because she’s seen how effective it is.
So, rather than compare two different homes, I’m going to show you her photos and my photos. I want you to look at them and ask yourself which home you’d be more likely to go see in person. Which of these “two” homes looks like it’s worth the asking price of $219,900?
Her Version
My Version
Does it even look like the same home? How about the kitchen?
Her Version
My Version
If you were browsing the listings on Craigslist and saw her pictures in one and mine in another, would you have recognized them as being the same home? I’m not knocking REALTORS®. They have a hard enough job as it is trying to handle a real estate transaction from start to finish. The successful ones are always good sales people, but sales and marketing are two different things. Being good at marketing doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re good at photography or graphic design. This is the age of specialization.
Jamie Robinson, who lists homes for sale in the Red Mountain area of Mesa, Arizona, is a smart Realtor. She doesn’t try to do it all herself – she has used my services for her websites, her Craigslist postings, and for photographing properties. This means she gets more leads, which means she’s able to sell her listings for more money in less time. Others thinks she just gets “better” listings. The truth is she makes sure her listings look as good on the computer as they do in person.
Pictures can say a thousand words. Make sure they say the right thousand.
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