From Instagram to Pinterest to Snapchat, digital photos have become their own mode of online and mobile communication. With 92 percent of home buyers using the Internet as part of their home search, listing photos are a critical factor in the selling price of your home, how quickly it sells, and whether it sells at all.
For homes listed between $200,000 and $1 million, It was ound that homes with listing photos taken with DSLR cameras sell for $3,400 to $11,200 more relative to their list prices. At the high end of the spectrum, professionally photographed homes for more than $1 million sold at prices similar to those with amateur photographs. In Los Angeles, Redfin real estate agent Eric Tan says, “professional photography and even photo post-processing are expected on million dollar homes.” While million dollar homes take longer to sell, DSLR photography still helps these luxury homes sell faster than than they otherwise would.
For each price range, the dollar figures indicate how much closer to list price professionally photographed homes sold versus amateur photographed homes.
DSLR Photos = More Money, Less Problems (Selling)
Across all price tiers, homes with DSLR photography were more likely to sell within six months than homes with point-and-shoot photos. In the $400,000 to $500,000 price range, 64 percent of homes with DSLR photos sold within six months, compared to 46 percent of homes with point-and-shoot photos. For those difficult-to-sell million dollar homes, 35 percent of professionally photographed homes sold in six months, compared to 30 percent of homes with point-and-shoot photos.
For each price range, the percentage indicates the difference in the likelihood that a home will sell in in six months when shot with a professional DSLR camera versus a point-and-shoot camera
Sell Your Home in a Snap
Since professionally photographed homes are more likely to sell in general, and to sell for more money, it’s not surprising that these homes also sell faster. Because online searching and browsing is such a critical part of the home-buying process, it follows that a better-photographed home will sell faster because more people are enticed to visit the home and people know what they are getting before they even set foot in the home. Across all price ranges, homes with professional photos sold faster. In the million dollar range, professionally photographed homes sold four days faster, and those in the $400,000 range sold three weeks faster than their counterparts with amateur photos.
For each price range, the days indicate how much faster a professionally photographed home sold compared to a home with amateur photos.
Look Sharp, Get More
For this latest study, Redfin dug a little deeper, looking at photo sharpness. Photo sharpness can be thought of as detail added to a picture by using a good camera, lens and lighting. Whether it’s a crisp reflection in a mirror, or bright flowers in the front yard, a sharper picture will show a house in its best light. We used some fancy math and image processing via OpenCV to group our photos by a sharpness percentile. The sharpest 10 percent of photos sold at or above list price 44 percent of the time, while listings with average sharpness sold at or above list just 13 percent of the time.
Better looking, sharper photos are more likely to sell above list price
