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Image by lane.bailey via Flickr

Last year I wrote a post that flippantly compared an eBay listing with an average MLS listing for a home for sale.  Since last year, the number of pictures available in the MLS has gone up.  Last year at this time, the maximum number of pictures was 20, now it is 25.  But, I see very few listings bumping up against the limit of 25 pictures.  Heck, I don’t see many that are touching the old 20 limit.  There are even a lot of listings that don’t make it to 12 pictures, the limit from a few years ago.

I’ve noticed something else, too.  The quality of pictures is going down.  WAY down.  I see more and more listings where the pictures don’t even match the quality from most cell phone cameras.  In fact, I went into a house recently that had blurry, pixelated photos in the MLS.  With my phone I was able to shoot better pictures… at the same angles… as what was published to try to attract buyers to the home.

I don’t understand it.  Study after study shows that buyers want lots of high quality pictures so that they can see the properties.  The want to see the layout of the home and see what types of trim and fixtures are in it.  They want to be able to see the condition.  They even want to see things like HVAC units, crawl spaces, garages and attics.  They use pictures to eliminate properties from the search… or to highlight properties that they REALLY want to get into.

Most of the listings on eBay have better picture representation that most home listings in the MLS.  And it is a pretty sad state when a $5,000 car… or worse yet, a pair of $100 hockey skates… has more pictures of high quality than a $300,000 house.  (BTW, it is homes prices from under $100k to WELL over $2M with crappy photos).

If you are a home seller, you need to DEMAND that your agent have a lot of high quality photos of your house in their listing.  Even ugly houses need to have high quality pictures.  they are buyers looking for ugly houses.  And you won’t make a sale because someone thought your house was a showplace… then got there and found a fixer-upper.  Instead, you will likely push away the buyer looking the fixer-upper.

I’ve NEVER had a buyer tell me that they would have bought the house, but there were too many pictures.  I HAVE had buyers tell me that we should skip a particular house because the pictures were fuzzy and didn’t have any detail… and they were pressed for time.

Get good pics.

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