Don't get us wrong . . . you must have real estate photos!
Skipping the real estate photos, or posting poor ones, sends the wrong signal to your clients and the market.
You need great photos. Just understand: they won’t make your listing stand out.
Real estate photographs are no substitute for a property description
In the age of digital property photographs, perhaps the old adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” is as out of date as the pinhole camera. If that seems counter-intuitive, consider for a moment your last Zillow session. How many photographs did you see? They’re all great, right? They all look about the same, right? If you were presented with all of the kitchen photographs, could you match them to the appropriate address?
Today, residential real estate listings are less likely to be distinguished by the usual staging shots than by creative property descriptions. Maybe that’s why so many real estate photographers are adding Nila June to their services.
When an agent tells a seller, “No one reads property descriptions,” the seller thinks, “I have an agent who wants to coast through this job without even meeting one of the most basic expectations of posting a home for sale.” Or wonders, “Can my agent write?”
If a listing has a poor (or has no) property description, the potential seller thinks, “I’m not going to list with an agent who can’t even be bothered to write a property description.”
The potential buyer wonders, “What kind of attention to detail can I expect to have been put into this house? During the closing process, can I expect important documents from people who cannot be bothered to produce even a basic, expected piece of sales collateral?”
Real estate photographs do not convey the use of a room
More than property photographs can do, a great property listing descriptions help to lower the imaginative burden on the potential buyer.
A poor description conveys only the physical details of the house. When those details are simply described in a perfectly accurate, straightforward manner, the reader might as well be reading an auto parts manual. Abbreviations can make those descriptions even worse than plain: Who wants to live in a home that has a LUG or SEC? And what’s a Wbfp?
A great description puts the home seeker in the stunning foyer, the chef’s kitchen, the tranquil primary bedroom, and the beautifully landscaped yard, all within an easy stroll of shopping, schools, and nearby open spaces
Real estate photographs aren't great for describing location
For “location, location, location,” don’t send your buyers to an online map.
Even in a post-pandemic world, location remains important. Work-from-home technologies might have reduced the value of a short commute. Even if that is the case, other locational advantages have risen in counterbalance: proximity to dining variety, parks, pools, mountains, or beaches.
Property photographs fall short in this important task. Rather than depend upon potential buyers to resort to Google, it’s best to present them with the conclusions you want them to draw. Your curated perspective will help them internalize the locational value of the propert.
Put your buyers in the pool, or on the porch, patio or deck
Porches, decks, patios, pools, gazebos, and other external structures or features, are key components of the buyers’ future lifestyle. They deserve more than the typical, brief “large deck”-type of mention at the end of a write up.
Property photographs will show you the patio, but not the party. Let’s see a grill and cooler on the deck. Let’s relax in the Adirondack chairs on the flagstone. Let’s cool off in the pool.
It's easy to miss important features in a real estate photograph
Maybe a buyer would notice double ovens and dishwashers during a careful, lingering inspection of a photograph, and maybe not. The photograph showing the double ovens might be the 537th photograph the buyer has seen during the past thirty minutes on Zillow.
That buyer would much rather be thinking about how easy these double ovens make multi-course meal prep. Won’t these double dishwashers make cleaning up a snap after large dinner parties?. A fireplace in the living room is accurate enough. Better if it imparts a lodge like warmth, and draws conversations into the room. Neutral coloring sounds kind of bland. But a blank canvas that accommodates a buyer’s interior design vision sounds exciting.
But you're an agent, not a writer! Where should you start?
Let’s face it. The keyboard on your desk doesn’t make you yearn to write property descriptions any more than the wrench in your basement inspires you to re-plumb the bathrooms. You’re better at shaking hands, showing houses, and closing deals.
To be fair, you probably don’t take your own photographs, either. So when it comes to the writing, where do you start?
On gig sites (Fiverr, Upwork and the like), professional writers offer to create your property description. Turnaround times range up to several days, and prices can reach hundreds of dollars. Generally, the process will involve a few days of conversation, as the writer gathers from you the physical details about the house. Then there are several iterations of the description itself, and at some point the listing will be ready to go.
Considering the high commissions that are at stake for a home sale, it makes sense to invest time and money for a professional property description.
Nila June descriptions are worthy of your great real estate photos
Nila June is a system that grafts human writing skill onto unlimited computational power in order to produce great property descriptions for you. Qwerticulation has said: “Nila June is the best property description generator.” Inman News has called Nila June “Ideal for listing agents, teams, and brokers.” Our property descriptions, though instantly delivered to you, sound as if they are written by a group of professional writers, precisely because they are written by a group of professional writers, in anticipation of any information that you might provide.
Nila June’s business model is to provide you with high value property descriptions on demand for a reasonable fee. We’re confident you’ll keep coming back because our descriptions save time, impress sellers, and attract buyers.