Real Estate Agents Need Professional Photography Even In A Hot Market
The goal of hiring a professional real estate photographer is not to sell the home – rather, the images are also used to sell the real estate agent who is selling the home.
That might sound a little counter-intuitive to you since they are marketing a house, but that concept is what underlies the need for real estate agents to hire a professional photographer for every shoot, regardless if homes are selling ridiculously fast or not.
Here are three main reasons why using a professional photographer helps your business in the West Michigan or the Greater Grand Rapids area:
Reason #1. Your Brand Is Defined By Your Marketing
When we are talking about a real estate agent’s brand, we are talking about the way they are perceived by their potential clients.
For example, when a potential client sees an agent’s marketing for a house on their street, what assumptions do they make about that realtor?
If all they have to go off is the marketing material for that listing, then that marketing campaign has an important role to play in the decision making process. Using photos that look subpar or amateur might not impact on the sale of a home in a hot market, but they do impact on the that potential clients perceptions about that realtor.
Compare those perceptions with an agent who uses magazine worthy photos for their listings. The difference is not hard to see that a seller looking for an agent to sell their home will choose the one that made their listings look as amazing as possible based on what they had to work with, and not the agent that did not hire a professional.
Reason #2. Your Images Are Not For Now But For Later
Houses might be selling within days or even hours of hitting the market, but that property market is going to change one day down the road. This might be a slow change, or it could be a sudden grind to a halt. Regardless of how this happens, change is inevitable down the road. When that happens, homes are going to take a lot longer to sell and listings will dry up.
Imagine that we have reached that day in the future where the number of new listings have slowed down. Home sellers are being much more particular about which agent they choose to work with because they know they need a good one if they want to sell their home within the first 60 days, let alone within the first 6 months.
Where do sellers go to find an agent? They search online and look for agents in their area.
What do they look for in an agent? They will likely review the sales history for that agent. They will scroll through previous home listings. They will evaluate the quality of the photos and the videos and whatever else the agent might use to market the property.
For some sellers that might be as far as they get. Their decision as to which agents they speak with can be decided quickly in those lists of past sales. They ask themselves this simple question: ‘Given how that agent marketed homes in the past, do I want that agent treating my home the same way?’
And if the photos are not good, then they will probably answer that question with a definitive ‘no’.
Now some homeowners might go further than that. They might dig into the numbers, looking at the agent’s sales history, how long a home usually takes to sell, and what price do they received. In a hot market those numbers will all look very similar, so the seller needs to look at the marketing approach taken by each agent.
Do they want to have their home sold a certain way by this agent, or another way by that agent?
That is where the quality of the photos matter. If you get this wrong and if your listings look inferior compared with your competition, then you will easily lose that seller to another agent.
Reason #3. Sellers Talk
Imagine a conversation happening between a recent seller and their neighbor:
Sara: Congratulations on the sale of your house! How did things go for you?Jill: Everything was great! I mean, obviously the market is super hot at the moment, so I’m not surprised that we sold in three days. Even so, we were really impressed with the steps our agent took to help us out.Sara: Wow, that’s great to hear! Which agent did you go with?Jill: We went with Amanda Jones. She was fantastic right from the start. Even though it’s tempting to cut corners in this market, she went all in with the listing. She spent hundreds of dollars on a professional photographer to shoot the photos and create a video for our home.Sara: Agents still do that?Jill: Yes, some do, but sometimes they don’t. I wanted to be sure we were using the right agent so I looked at some other listings around town. You could really tell the difference when the photos were obviously taken by the agent. When I looked at Amanda’s listings I was really impressed by the photographer she used. The quality of their photos was amazing! I’d recommend her to anyone.
On the other hand, can you imagine how this conversation would play out if the agent had taken their own photos?
Yes, Sara still would have sold her home, but the focus of the conversation would more likely focus on the speed of the market and not than the quality of the real estate agent. In that scenario, the real estate agent Amanda Jones would barely get a mention.
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Now ask yourself one final question:After the sale of a home, will your sellers boast about your willingness to hire a photographer even in a hot market, or will they only talk about the speed of the sale?