In our work with clients, we see literally thousands of properties for sale each year. If we add in properties we review online, that number increases dramatically. All real estate listings have mandatory fields that need to be filled in, hopefully accurately, before the listing is allowed to go live.
While text fields or drop down lists can be mandated, there is nothing that says a listing has to have any photos, or that the photos need to be a certain resolution or showcase the attributes of the property. As a result, there is a wide range in the quality and quantity of photos for listings. Many agents realize that professional, high quality images help sell the property for the best price in the least amount of time. There are, however, some agents who apparently think beauty is only skin deep and photos aren’t really worth spending any time or money.
We aim to be supportive of fellow real estate agents and we definitely understand when things don’t work out quite as planned, but periodically we have to shake our heads at the photos that are chosen by a listing agent. We’ve done a few posts showcasing the latest bad real estate photos we’ve encountered and it felt like it was time for another edition.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, these real estate photos are just worth two words.
We’ll let you pick your two words after you’ve taken a look at the photos.
- Oh boy.
- Wait, what?
- Dear lord.
Let’s get started with the Summer 2024 Edition of Bad Real Estate Photos!
Not sure why, but for some reason, everyone thinks this house is haunted.
Let’s begin with a house for sale in the Beaches area of Toronto. It’s on a very desirable street, south of Queen, not too far from the water. Despite that, it’s been on the market for 423 days as of today. The sole photo on the listing may have to take some of the blame for that lengthy listing period.
It honestly looks like someone googled “haunted house in city” and then posted the first result.
We’re no strangers to seeing bad real estate photos, but this one had the entire team scratching their heads. It is that rare combination of a low resolution, blurry photo, taken at night with poor lighting. Despite the fact that the house was listed in June, the photo seems to have been taken in the winter based on the lack of foliage and the snow on the front lawn. We’d say it’s a placeholder photo until a professional photographer is called in, but it’s been for sale for more than a year. The neighbouring house takes up half the photo and seems to have been under construction, as there is temporary fencing and a tarp in view. All in all, it feels like a bit more effort could have gone into the marketing for this $1.7M listing. Perhaps a second photo taken during the day?
Can’t…quite…make…out…the…details.
Our next participant realizes that you can’t list a place for sale with just one photo. While you can upload 40 photos to a listing, this condo listing in downtown Toronto has 13 photos. The lead photo is the hallway that presumably leads to the condo unit front door in the distance. The last four are nighttime photos of the view from the balcony. That leaves eight photos of the interior of the unit, and given it’s a small place under 600 sf, that’s pretty reasonable.
The reason this listing made the cut is that the photos are tiny. The agent clearly took the photos themselves and uploaded a very, very small version to the MLS system. When we say very, very small versions we mean that the file size for each of the photos is 7 KB. A standard, lower-resolution photo on MLS is about 500KB and a good quality photo on MLS is about 2 MB. So, these ones are absolutely tiny, and as a result, everything looks to be quite a distance away and it’s very hard to make out any details. Oh, five of the photos are vertical photos uploaded horizontally, so it makes it even more challenging to get a sense of the place.
If you’re thinking that given the high amount of one bedroom condos for sale in the city right now, they should have invested in better photography, we will point out it was listed in January, 2023. The market wasn’t quite as competitive for condo units back then as it is now in August, 2024, but given it has been for sale for 591 days as of today, some higher quality photos probably would have helped.
Living room set for sale, includes Townhouse
Not all of the bad real estate photos we encounter are on listings that have been for sale for months or even years. The below photos come from a townhouse for sale in North York that has been on the market for just two days.
We’re including this property as the listing agent has made a mistake that many non-professional photographers do when they take pictures of a home. Instead of focusing on the attributes and aspects of the property itself, they take pictures of the furniture.
The lead photo that shows up whenever anyone sees this listing for the first time is the combined front door/kitchen/dining/living area. It isn’t exactly a combination that buyers are keen on, so it is a bit curious that this was what was chosen to showcase the home. In addition, the living room set is the focus of the photo and it looks more like someone is selling their couch and table on Facebook marketplace.
The rest of the photos follow a similar trend, with window blinds drawn to make sure nothing distracts from the furniture. All of the photos are taken vertically, which avoids that sideways posting issue, but it means it is hard to tell much about the place in most photos. The upstairs hall features not one, not two, but three doors, plus an overhead light!
Our personal favourite is the last one, the single photo of the bathroom, which has a nice soft, diffused light, a low angle and what appears to be the entrance to heaven behind the shower curtain.
We know that not all properties for sale are worthy of being in Architectural Digest, but photos truly are a critical part of how you attract a buyer for a home. You need to have a good number of photos, the photos need to be high resolution and viewable and you need to show off the various attributes of the property, not the furniture or items in the home that aren’t staying.
If you’re thinking about selling your home, then we’d love to show you how our professional photographers get gorgeous photos of the most appealing aspects of our client’s homes. Get in touch with us to see the difference!
