July 12th, 2008 by Michael Oliver

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I did a post a while ago that talked about the absolute need to have better than average pictures of your home on MLS to get more buyers into your home. With so many active listings on the market, most buyers (and agents) will quickly discount or altogether disqualify a home based on the few pictures that they see online, in flyers, or in other advertising. So here are some more examples of poorly done pictures. I just cannot understand how anyone with a professional mindset could use these pictures to represent a listing. Keep in mind that high quality pictures can frequently attract that one buyer who is willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to make the purchase. The reverse is also true. Just one truly horrible picture may misrepresent the home so badly that the one buyer who was perfect for that property disqualifies it and will NEVER SEE IT!

This is bad. How could a picture of a kitchen be so bad? It makes my head hurt to look at it for more then 30 seconds. It’s like one of those “Where’s Waldo” puzzles. I’m just waiting for the little Waldo guy to pop out at me.

This one isn’t as bad. It is just an example of an agent being lazy. It’s embarrassing that he’s representing a $550,000+ property in this way. Maybe he was watching the movie with the little girl and it was just too good to step away from, so he decided to take a picture while he was watching it with her. I have to admit some movies are so good you don’t want to get up and miss a part, yet I don’t think this would justify placing such a photo in MLS.

Sure looks inviting!

This one may not be the agent’s fault. If a seller doesn’t want to clean the kitchen prior to having pictures taken for MLS, then what can you do? However, it does not mean you really need to put this in MLS. Who would look at this kitchen and be excited about going to look at this home?

As you can tell, there is a difference between just taking pictures of a home and actually taking pictures of a home to show it in a light that makes people want to go see it and buy it. If you’re trying to sell your home — whether as a FSBO or through an agent — please make sure either you or your agent(s) take pictures that make your home look like a showplace and not just a run of the mill home. And please don’t make the mistakes represented in these pictures. Honestly, these sellers would be 100% better off not having them on MLS at all than to have people get put off by the photos before even seeing the home.