A lot of agents in a hot market think they don’t need quality listing photos because the property will sell with or without good photos. And they may be right. It may not sell as fast or for as much as it would with good photos, but it’ll sell. The agent will then consider themselves to be a great business-person because they’re a couple of hundred dollars richer for not paying someone for good photos.
Or will they?
Photos not only represent the property, but they’re an advertisement for the listing agent as well. Agents with poor photos are telling other potential clients that they are only going to do the bare minimum to market the property. Sellers notice, too.
Every one of my clients hires me for every listing. But I’ve got one client who takes on a wide variety of listing types and sends me out to everything from vacant lots to mobile homes to estates. She understands that good photos will get her more clients, and it works: I shot 23 properties for her last year and am on track to do more than that this year.
Sellers notice, too. More than once I’ve had sellers tell me that they picked the listing agent because of their marketing, good photos being a key element of that marketing. “I saw their listing down the street.” “I saw their photos in the local paper.”
Brokers notice, too. Many a time I’ve had a listing agent call me because their broker demanded that they do good photos. Brokers get it: the picture represent the property, the agent, and the agency.
So the agent who saves a couple hundred bucks by not getting photos on one listing may lose many thousands of dollars by not getting other listings and it may impact their mobility in the real estate community.
You might want to think about saving that small photography fee and consider whether it’s really saving you money or not.