First impressions count! In most cases, the photographs a buyer sees online will determine whether they investigate that property further. Don’t waste your marketing spend by using average property photos.

We have all heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”. When it comes to marketing a property this saying should be heeded.

With the vast majority of buyers starting their property search online, often the first impression a buyer will get of a property is the photos they see. If these photos don’t immediately attract their attention they will skip that property and continue on to the next one that does.

You may well have the best property on the market, but if the photos don’t reflect this you may be missing the interest of your buyer. Likewise you may not have the best property, but you can attract interest by using professional photos that present the property in the best possible light.

You only need to look at your Facebook newsfeed and ads to see how many people these days are calling themselves professional photographers. It seems that anybody can go out and buy themselves an entry level DSLR camera and set up shop as a photographer. Many of these people have no technical training and are trying to turn their hobby into a career. Some of them will offer to shoot for free and others will charge unrealistically low and unsustainable prices. In most cases the photos provided are not of professional quality, although this may not be obvious until put beside a photo of the same property taken by a true professional photographer.

A true professional photographer will have spent thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on professional photography equipment, have the appropriate training and experience, and of course the relevant insurances. Some of them such as myself may be accredited with the Australian Institute of Professional Photographers, which is the leading membership body for professional photographers in Australia.

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Even amongst professional property photographers there are degrees of quality, just like in most industries.

Here are a few questions to ask you photographer to help gauge the quality you are likely to receive:

• How long have you been a professional photographer?
• Do you do your own re-touching between jobs/at the end of the day, or do you have a team of digital retouchers to provide consistently high quality?
• Do you take multiple exposures and then blend these during retouching to ensure perfect exposure throughout the photo, even for views out of windows?
• Do you as part of your standard retouching replace the sky where necessary, remove power cords and bins, remove distracting reflections, and green up the garden within the realms of reality?
• Can you realistically illuminate lights where the bulb was blown at the time of taking the photo?
• Can you if required de-clutter a room after the photo has been taken?
• Can you if required remove a tenant’s furniture and belongings from the photo?
• Can you if required add virtual furniture to a room?

It is not uncommon for the marketing budget for a property to be in the thousands of dollars. These days it costs close to $500 just to get a property listed on one of the main real estate websites. There is little point spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on marketing, nearly all of which will include photos of the property, and then using a cut-price photographer to produce average photos instead of fantastic photos.

Doing this would be like Coca-Cola buying a 30 second spot for a TV commercial during a major sporting broadcast, and then using the cheapest advert production company in their area. It just wouldn’t happen! They would engage a proven experienced professional capable of producing an advertisement that will attract attention so as to get maximum value for the money they spent buying the 30 second spot.

In the property world, if for the sake of saving $100-$200 the agent or vendor decides to use a photographer who doesn’t provide consistently high quality and exposure-blended images instead of one who does, they are likely ultimately costing themselves money. They may be missing buyers who have not been attracted by the photos and therefore haven’t investigated that property further. It’s basic supply and demand economics that the more potential buyers there are for a property, the higher the price it is likely to be sold for.

The old adage of “you get what you pay for” is generally true in most industries. The property photography industry is no different. If you want consistently high quality photos that will stand out from the crowd, spend that extra little bit of money and engage a quality professional photographer who will deliver consistently high quality.

For professional photography in the Brisbane area, call Jonathan on 0412 332 297 or email jonathan@jonathanthomsenphotography.com