I’ve been meaning to write this post but there’s always been something else to say.  In today’s market, 77-80% of all buyers are searching the Internet.  It’s never been more important to have lots of pictures on-line if your house is for sale.  The maximum number of pictures we are permitted to post on our RMLS is 16.   Please have your Realtor® post the maximum number of pictures allowed for your RMLS, plus a virtual tour too.

My photography skills are zilch.  I have a tendency to cut people’s roofs off of their houses just like I cut people’s heads off when taking pictures.  A bad picture of your house isn’t a substitute for no picture.  So, I made a personal commitment to my sellers to have the maximum number of photos taken by a professional photographer and I have a virtual tour taken as well of every property regardless of the price of the home.  Athol in CT. has a funny website that has “bad” RMLS photos.    CLICK HERE to see them.   There are many Realtors® who have their bad photos posted on this site from across the U.S.  Frankly, I see many of those same kind of photos here in our RMLS as well.  Ask to see how the photos of your home appear on-line and which websites they are posted on so you can view them.

Quite a while ago, our RMLS made a regulation that we had to post at least a few pictures of our listings as some Realtors® weren’t posting any pictures at all.  Now I see maybe 3-4 photos instead of the 16 in some cases, and no virtual tours on a lot of the listings.  That’s a shame, having our RMLS force its membership to “market” their listings.  This is what Realtors® should be doing as that’s part of the Realtor’s® job!

Last week I saw a listing that has been on the market 447 days, had 4 pictures, no virtual tour and no room measurements.  Room sizes are left off on probably 1/2 the listings I see in our RMLS.  Do you think a buyer wanting a certain size dining room or bedroom will look at your listing let alone find it that way?   I didn’t look beyond those items to see if there was anything else lacking in the listing.  But, do you think this house will sell anytime soon?  I hope it wasn’t your home.  Oh, it did say it was totally remodeled but one will never know looking at the RMLS listing as there were barely any pictures.  Then there are those Realtors® who put ”cutsy” descriptions next to your address.  Your listing won’t ever be found on a map search if there is other information on the same line as your address.   Sellers and Realtors®need to do everything possible to give the house maximum exposure and provide accurate and complete information.

Having lots of photos makes all the difference in the world and will attract more buyers to your home as they are viewing your home on-line before they ever search out a Realtor®. Many of the virtual tours I see need certain software downloaded in order to view them.  The virtual tour company I use does several panoramas plus still shots and there is no additional software someone has to have on their computer.  We, as Realtors®, I believe need to make it easy for customers to view the virtual tour and pictures.  You’ll notice I didn’t talk about curb appeal as that’s for another post. But for now, lots of pictures, please!

ALL ABOUT…..Portland.Oregon.Real Estate, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. © Copyright 2008-2009 Betty Jung. All Rights Reserved. Use of this article, photos and images without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.  Based on a Blog at WordPress.

(For more local and national real estate information, go to www.bettyjung.com).