Penny Wise, Pound Foolish Photography Will Often Fail...Do Better Than That

She said, “Look, someone else is moving in. No business makes it there.”  I agreed.  Passing that little place on the side of the road every day for many years,  we have seen several start-ups in the rental building.. They set up, sit tight, take down, close the doors.  No business makes it there.  In between, the little building sits empty for months.  Sure, the first thought is “location, location, location” a prime rule of business dependent on customer traffic to and into the building.  Choosing that particular location is penny wise and pound foolish.  Sure, on limited capital it might be the only location the new tenants can afford…but it still fails.   

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

In a similar fashion, we do not understand how a property with elegance from the get go and plenty of sellable features is presented on real estate listings with what look like old cell phone photos.  A quick click to Zillow.com, Realtor.com or other listing web sites will show this is too often the case. There is a $600k home illustrated with “photo booth” quality images.  Walls are crooked; interiors hurt the eyes with blast-furnace-like over exposed windows; rooms with normal looking windows are dark and uninviting.  Flash reflections show in the bathroom mirrors and the kitchen is a little strange with that high end stainless refrigerator leaning out and to the side, misshapen and distorted as is the rest of the kitchen.

Penny wise and pound foolish? We believe it is and articles in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal prove it.  A study by real estate giant Redfin also adds value to the use of higher quality photography, showing how sales of properties over $300k benefit from higher end camera use (assuming a higher end photographer is on the viewfinder end of that camera). 

We do not expect our agency friends to have the time, equipment or experience to shoot and edit higher end marketing photographs. (A few do quite nice work but that is an exception.)  In similar regard, we do not and likely could not sell a property! We are not here to insult your listing photos...you are encouraged to look and decide if the quality is what you really want.. You list the property…have us do the photography because that is what we do. We do wish agents would take a closer look at the photos they are putting on the mls and ask: “Is this inviting and attractive? Am I attracting buyers or running them off?  Do the photos reflect my professionalism as a Realtor®?"  Frankly, we want the photo business and want the overall agency business to do better. We believe what we do with professional photos will help the sales situation.  We will provide photographs to catch the buyer’s eye and encourage checking out the property.  Poor photos simply do not encourage anyone to spend time looking, reading descriptions or taking time to go and see how the property really looks.

Penny wise and pound foolish?    Comments will be appreciated. What do you think?

 ThomasHaynesPhotoshoot Works out of Clinton, Tennessee