Friday, May 22, 2009

List Your Home With Caution, Pictures Are Important

If you're selling a home near Fort Knox Kentucky (or anywhere really), make sure the agent you choose knows that pictures are extremely important. This is a military relocation market and many buyers are making decisions based on pictures. Usually they are coming to visit Ft. Knox and have already picked out the homes they would like to see. In some cases they buy the home solely based off the pictures.

Quick Checklist:
All pictures need to be entered the same day the listing is entered into the system.
Pictures shouldn't be small (at least 800x600) when uploaded to the system.
No blurry ones and no crooked ones (no one likes a sinking house).
If you can avoid a dark cloudy day, do it.
Examples of bad pictures

You never get a second chance to make a first impression
Every single day we see new listings that are entered in the MLS (Multiple Listing Service a.k.a. the homes for sale database) with just one picture or no pictures at all. This is a major mistake and can hurt your chances of a quick sale. Buyers are entered into the system and get emailed when a new listing matches their criteria. You are in front of many buyers for the first time and if there's no picture, buyers will most likely move on to the next listing.

No buyer wants to look at small pictures
I think there used to be a requirement that pictures had to be small (320x240) to be entered into the system. That's no longer the case. Make sure your agent uploads bigger pictures, if they're too big then the system re-sizes them anyway.

Is that home sinking?
No, we hope not, but that's the impression some bad pictures give if they aren't straight. Also don't allow pictures to be taken on a super cloudy day if it can be avoided.
Believe it or not there's a home for sale in the high $300k range that has one photo, that's it. To make it worse it's a photo taken at dusk.

Remember how important pictures are when interviewing agents.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I like your post, actually you have given a very useful tips for listing the home in MLS.

Boise real estate