Professional real estate photographers are hired not to sell the house, but to sell the agent who is marketing the house.
While you might find that concept strange, it’s what motivates real estate agents to hire a professional photographer for each listing, regardless of how quickly homes are selling.
Here are three reasons why:
Reason #1. It’s your marketing that makes your brand.
A real estate agent’s brand is the way their potential clients perceive them.
When a potential client sees an agent’s marketing for a home on their street, what assumptions do they have about the agent?
When all they have to go on is the marketing material for that listing, then the marketing campaign plays an important role. Photographs that look amateurish might not negatively affect the sale of a home in a hot market, but they certainly affect the perception that potential clients have of that agent.
With those assumptions in mind, it’s not hard to see why a seller looking for a real estate agent will select an agent that utilizes magazine-quality photography instead of the agent who took their own pictures.
Reason #2. It’s not about now… Think about later.
A home might be sold in a few days or even hours after being listed on the market, but that property market will change one day. It may be slow to change, but it could also come to a quick grinding halt, but change is always coming. When it happens, it will take much longer to sell a home, and listings will dry up.
Assume we’ve arrived at a point in the future where the number of new listings has slowed dramatically. Property sellers are being much more picky in who they hire as an agent because they know they need an excellent one if they want to sell their home in the first 60 days, much alone the first six months.
Where will sellers go to find and agent? They will go to the internet and look at agents in their area.
What will they look for? The first thing they’ll probably look at is that agent’s sales history. They’ll look at past listings and the photos and videos, as well as anything else the agent includes.
For some sellers, that’s the end of it. Their selection of which agents to contact is based on those previous sales lists, where they ask themselves, “Knowing how that agent has marketed properties in the before, do I want that agent to market my home the same way?”
And if the images don’t look great, they’ll most probably react with a resounding ‘no.’
Some homeowners may go even further and look at the numbers, such as the agent’s sales history, how long it takes to sell a home, and what price it sells for. In a hot market, those stats can all look very similar, so the seller returns to each agent’s marketing strategy.
Reason #3. People talk.
Consider the following exchange between a recent seller and their next-door neighbor:
Sally: Congratulations on your home’s sale! Things worked well for you?
Helen: It was fantastic! I mean, the market is obviously quite hot right now, so it’s no surprise that we sold in three days. Nonetheless, we were really pleased with our salesperson.
Sally: Wow, that’s great! Who was your agent?
Helen: We went with Mandy Johnson, who was excellent from the beginning. Despite the fact that it would have been easy to save money in this market, she went all out, paying hundreds of dollars to hire a professional photographer to take images and create a video for our property.
Sally: Agents still do that?
Helen: Some do, while others do not. I looked at several other listings in central Connecticut and noticed that the images were obviously taken by the realtor, but I was blown away by the photographer Mandy chose, and the quality of the photos was incredible! But, once again, it was Mandy’s eagerness to hire a photographer to showcase our home in the best possible light that wowed me. She’s someone I’d suggest to everyone.
Can you imagine how things would have gone differently if the agent had taken their own photos?
Yes, Helen would have sold her home, but the focus of the talk would have been on the market’s quickness rather than the real estate agent’s quality. Mandy Johnson, our real estate agent, would hardly be acknowledged in such a case.
Will your sellers brag about your willingness to employ a photographer even in a hot market after the sale, or will they merely talk about how quickly you sold?
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