We all like to put our best foot forward. The same is true when selling a home. Lisa Bosques did an excellent blog on deceptive photos posted by Real Estate Agents. I agree with her completely, but where is the line?
I met my wife on line and it was a great way for us to meet. However, I constantly hear disaster stories about deception; this is especially true of photos. Now when I sent photos to my wife to be did I suck in my gut? Yes I did and this is getting harder and harder to do. Did I include pictures with my two cute little boys (that set the hook)? You know I did! Did I send her a picture of me crawling out of bed to go to work? Are you nuts! Of course not! Did I send her pictures around the house after my boys have been around for about 10 minutes? No Way!
We all want to start by putting our best foot forward. As an aside, how old is your photo you use on your web site and marketing? Can you be recognized by it? Mine is about 4 years old. I hate the idea of taking the time to get a new photo and putting it in all the places it needs to be. People used to say I looked like Jack Nicholson, the fatter older Jack,; then I was compared to Garrison Keiller and Dan Akroyd. Now I have reached bottom and look like Drew Carey.
Is that Gene or Drew?
I have found that homes with the best pictures sometime look like . . .well you get the picture! (Or did you?) I have gotten good at spotting some of the tricks:
- When the garage door looks like a fleet of semi trucks can drive through it that means everything has been shot with a wide angle lens. (As an aside I think the photographers have used wide angle lenses when taking my picture! I can’t be that big.)
- A leading shot of the interior means the front of the house will scare the hell out of you.
- Shots with 15 cars parked in front of the house means 20 to 30 people have beat the living daylights out of the house.
- Blurring means the listing agent snapped the photo with a cell phone while driving by and is probably too scared to go in the house.
One of the worst things I have seen is a dead lawn was painted green in order to make the photos look good! Yesterday
I was at a meeting with a group of Realtors about an upcoming Fraud Seminar we are planning (more on this in future blogs). I got a big laugh when it was asked if anyone was good with photography and I said, “Not by the looks of the MLS.” Agents are often times not good photographers. It is a skill. We often feel pressured to put as many photos up as we can to try and show the house, when fewer might be better.
Do you get the picture? Agents, how old are your professional pictures? Where is the line on taking pictures of homes? For the buying public, have you been disappointed in a home based on deceptive pictures?
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