This is me in today’s Arizona Republic (permanent link):
Picture this: Digital photos can sell your home
Here’s the brutal truth about the real estate market in the Valley of the Sun: There are nine homes for sale for every motivated, qualified buyer.
So what should you do to make sure that your home is the one in nine that will sell this month? Everything you can.
For our listings, we’re pushing our way up the technology ladder as fast as we can. We’re doing custom yard signs for each listing, custom Web sites or Weblogs, interactive floor plans, virtual tours, even video tours featuring interviews with the sellers.
It goes without saying that the homes are priced right, in perfect repair and staged to encourage buyers to move themselves in mentally. Ideally, we want an inspection report, with the repairs documented, and an appraisal to demonstrate that the price is fair — and that an offer will make it through loan underwriting.
Not everyone can do all this work, but there is a simple technology available to everyone that can make a huge difference in marketing your home.
What is it? Digital photography.
An MLS listing can have up to six photos, but many have only one — or none. A flier can have even more pictures, and a simple Web page can feature photos of everything that matters in the home. Photography hasn’t been expensive since the days of George Eastman, but digital photography is virtually free.
But there is a right way and a wrong way to do everything. Good real estate photos should be taken with the widest-angle lens you can lay hands on. And while multiple mega-pixels sell cameras, for a real estate photo to be useful it needs to be a small file size: 640 x 480 pixels is perfect. Fill the frame, showing what’s important, omitting what isn’t, and be sure to work with plenty of light.
Virtual tours draw eyes at Realtor.com. People will watch videos, if only for the thrill of watching “TV” on the computer. Poetic copy instills dreams. But nothing sells the buyer’s imagination on a home like a wealth of big, colorful, richly detailed photographs.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, real estate photography
Arlingtgon Virginia Condos -- Jay says:
I would put forth that video of the sellers of a whom is not as important as the neighbors of the seller saying what they love about the neighborhood and its schools. Here is my 1st attempts–very amateur but you can see the potential of getting several neighbors chime in on the merits of the neighborhood the purchaser is concerning:
http://www.justnewlistings.com/prince-william-real-estate-woodbridge-mls.html
By the way, the subscribe feature is great….
May 5, 2007 — 7:33 pm
Arlingtgon Virginia Condos -- Jay says:
I meant to say the “merits of the neighborhood the purchaser is “‘considering’.” (excuse bogus punctuation)
May 5, 2007 — 7:35 pm
Terry says:
I take photos myself and have Huthead.com create 360 virtual tours. I don’t really have to worry about sizing, as long as it’s not super big or small. Obviously, dimensions are irrelevant since it’s essentially a wide panorama (stitched from my photos). The response I’ve gotten to these tours is amazing, to say the least.
July 3, 2007 — 3:32 pm