How Home Sellers Can Get Great Real Estate Photos

You browse online real estate listings, right? How many times do you laugh at the photos? You chuckle at the fuzzy shot with a finger partly covering the phone’s lens. You giggle at the image of a bottle of toenail fungus remover parked on a bathroom counter.

But every once in a while, you run across a listing with photos that grab your attention — in a good way.

“We’re scrolling … and a beautiful image is there that stops the scroll,” says Wendy Forsythe, chief marketing officer for eXp Realty. “We stop and we say, ‘Oh, show me more.’ And then we might, like, start swiping to see more of the interior photos.”

How do you get listing photos that make buyers stop scrolling and start visualizing where their holiday decorations will go? First, choose an agent who employs good photographers. Second, get the house ready for its flattering close-ups.

When you see awful pictures in a real estate listing, you can bet that a pro didn’t take them — the homeowner or real estate agent did, and usually with a phone instead of a camera. Amateur picture-takers don’t always know their limitations.

“It’s a skill set,” says Cliff Freeman, an eXp agent in Dallas, adding that photography is not always something busy real estate agents will have time to learn.

For that reason, most agents hire pro photographers. “I consider that part of my marketing expense and part of what my commission is paid to me for,” says Kate Ziegler, an agent with Arborview Realty in the Boston area.

The agent you hire will likely, in turn, choose the photographer. So conduct job interviews with at least two or three agents. Ask to see listings of homes that they sold in your home’s price range so you can get a sense of the quality of the pictures.

Even when you take care, you’re not guaranteed satisfaction. I sold a house recently after interviewing three agents, and the photos disappointed me. The shot selection showed the house well, but the images were aggressively processed. Pink pieces in a stained-glass window looked colorless, while the white walls looked like they were aglow with radioactivity. Everything looked slightly unreal, like a low-dose acid trip.

That’s not how Ziegler likes it. “I do feel very strongly that photos should be very realistic,” she says. “You don’t want things over-photoshopped.”

Art Moreno Jr., a real estate photographer in El Paso, Texas, theorizes that my fake-looking pictures were the fault of the editor, not the photographer. “Most photographers farm out their raw files to overseas editors for editing,” he says. Editors crank out finished photos for pennies. “That way these photographers can focus on volume and get away with it,” Moreno says.

In my case, it hardly mattered that the photos made the scrumptious hardwood floors look like vinyl. The buyer attended an open house and made an offer four days after the house was listed. But if the house had sat on the market for weeks without an offer, I might have requested a re-shoot.

A few days or weeks before your home’s photoshoot, pretend that you don’t own it. Tote a clipboard around to take notes. Starting in the driveway or at the curb, walk up to the house and go inside.

“I want you to put on your buyer’s hat,” Forsythe says. “This is not your house anymore. You’re a potential buyer. Make note of all the things that you see through that perspective. And then improve upon them for the photography.”

Do the shrubs need trimming? Do you need to power-wash the walkway? Should you repaint the front door? What’s your first impression when you walk inside?

“You have to think about the prospective buyer that’s walking through and what they’re seeing,” Forsythe says. “They’re trying to visualize their family and their furniture and their life in this property.”

You can make it easier for buyers to visualize themselves as owners by depersonalizing the house: putting away family photos, removing the kids’ artwork from the fridge. You want the pictures to make prospective buyers know they will feel welcome when they tour the home. “Invite them. Invite them into your space,” Moreno says.

If you’re still occupying the house on photo day, and it’s not empty or staged, your agent may give you a checklist of things to do just before the photographer arrives. Moreno has his own list that he gives to agents so they can pass it along to sellers. Among the highlights:

Declutter as much as you can. It’s more important to remove personal items than to have the place spotlessly clean, Moreno says.

Park vehicles away from the home so they don’t show up in pictures of the driveway and the curbside in front of the house. Hide trash and recycling receptacles. Clear the yard of toys and dog poop.

If you have outdoor spaces, set up tables and chairs as if you’ve invited guests to come over and enjoy them. Take the covers off any grills or hot tubs.

Inside, make sure all the lights work and they’re glowing with the same hue. Open all blinds. Turn off TVs, computer monitors and ceiling fans. (You’ve seen listing photos where the TV is on and the fans are whirring — and you were distracted, right?)

Straighten picture frames. Empty the washer and dryer. Put away shoes. Remove calendars — they can make a listing look dated. Conceal power cords and coaxial cables.

Then there are the bathrooms. In photos for real estate listings, the bathroom is often a chamber of horrors.

“Close the toilet seat. Close it down! Close it down!” Moreno says. And put a new roll of toilet paper in the holder; no buyer wants to imagine how you ended up with half a roll.

Close the shower curtain, unless you want to show off your nifty shower. And if you do want to include pictures of the shower, remove everything: shampoo, razors, loofahs, bottles of Dr. Bronner’s — everything.