Listing Photos and Virtual Tours – Poor Taos Practices

Posted by Jim Kimmons, Broker/Owner • January 28, 2010 • Printer-friendly

I don't do listings, only buyer brokerage and consulting services for buyers and sellers. I start with that because I want it clear that I have nothing to gain by jumping on my soapbox and providing information about poor listing practices, nor will companies or individuals be named.

We have a small MLS and there isn't a huge amount of competition here, so maybe those are a couple of reasons why listing brokers can continue to provide mediocre services for high dollar commission. In putting up a price change alert today, I noticed a home over $500k that had been reduced three times in price, and it only had three exterior photos. I was really feeling sorry for the seller for paying a high commission for such poor property presentation until I saw that it was owned by the broker...so they're getting what they deserve.

But, this prompted me to take another look at all of the residential listings currently active (873 of them) to see how they fared for images and virtual tours. Here are some bullet points:

303, or 35% had less than the maximum 9 allowed photos of the listed home.
90, or 10.3% had 4 or fewer photos.
24, or 2.7% had either no photo at all or just one.
A whopping 749, or 86%, had no virtual tour link in the listing.

Sorry sellers, but why do you put up with this? This is especially true in today's technology world when virtual tours are either free or a few bucks each. And, with digital cameras, why would there not be enough about your home worth taking 9 easy, fast and free pictures? In that group with zero or only 1 image, almost half were over $300k, with at least one listed at more than $1.2 million.