How Much Is Your Home Worth?
Several weeks ago, I wrote about how an image may be worth more than a thousand words in the context of a documentary. There are just certain milestones in our lives that we want to record for future generations to enjoy whether it be our family or others. In addition to a more historical perspective, there are also financial motivations for using high quality images in other applications such as real estate, which was highlighted in an article provide by the Wall Street Journal
The article highlights research conducted by a Seattle-based brokerage firm using data on homes listed in the Boston and Long Island markets by measuring the difference between the asking price and the closing price of homes. I do not need to regurgitate the information in the article, but they did find a correlation between high quality images with a better closing price. What I disagree with though is they attribute high quality image with an SLR. That is a very simplistic view of the world in my opinion. Photography is painting with light. Professional photographers utilize many different types of cameras, not just SLRs. In fact, many architectural photographers use a view camera as opposed to as an SLR. Others prefer to use a rangefinder. My point is, it’s not the equipment but the operator who knows about lighting and composition. The two should not be confused with one another. I have seen a lot of over/underexposed and out of focus images taken with an SLR.
So if you are in the process of selling your home in this tough economic environment and need all the help you can get to differentiate your dwelling from all the other real estate in your neighborhood with for sale signs, then have a professional photograph the interior and exterior of your home. House For Sale or Home for Sale is no longer enough.
Very timely advice Alex.
We intend to put our home up for sale later this spring.
You don’t happen to work in the Dallas area do you? (Just kidding, from your posts to date it appears you work in the Northeast.)
Well Pat, I do spend quite a bit of time in the Dallas area, but if you need someone right away you can go to either http://www.asmp.org or http://www.ppa.com for a professional in your area.
Hi Alex,
The problem is “professional” is so loosely defined these days. “I have a business card an a camera, I’m a Profeshunal.” I have bailed out quite a few who shot higher end homes who had no business doing the job. One actually required a reshoot, others required hours retouch. On the reshoot, I tagged along to play “assistant” to help the guy save face.
Hopefully this wave of people calling themselves photographers just because they got their new camera at the Best Buy will end. Thankfully a couple of these guys I “helped” no longer shoot for money. They found out what the real game entails.
BTW, I had a conversation a couple of months ago with a high end realtor who routinely gets million dollar plus listings, and she says , “No, no, no HDR on interiors!” Well it’s not an exact quote. She originally called it “that fake color” when we were talking. I asked her to show me an example of what she was talking about. It was the immediate telltale HDR stuff.
Caveat Emptor applies in photography as well. As far as retouching images of homes, I feel it falls under false advertising unless it was limited to color and exposure adjustments. Combining bracketed images would be okay as well.
However, I completely agree with your premise that there are too many people who call themselves professionals who should not but the free market should soon weed them out. Some photographers are better at certain genres. I can’t photograph a flower if my life depended on it.
On the retouch it’s mainly straightening (very) bad perspectives, some color and lighting correction. But on occasion I’ve had to remove the Big Wheel trike from the driveway because the ‘tog was just a moron. And one time, a box of Cheerios that was left on a front step. You just can’t believe some of the crap I get sometimes. I’ll have to write a blog post sometime about retouch horror stories.