A picture is worth 60,000 words.
To the human brain that is. Our brains process images 60,000x faster than text. With ever declining attention spans (8 seconds!!), images are more important, make that critical, than ever before.
As estate agents, this is an even truer fact. Property photography is (second only to pricing) the most important part of your property marketing whether you’re trying to win new instructions or attract more buyers.
There are 7 remarkable reasons that you can’t ignore when deciding whether or not to hire a professional photographer to carry out your photography needs.
Estate agents using a professional photography service:
- Attract More Vendors
- Attract More Buyers
- Sell Properties Faster
- Dramatically Boost Perceived Value Of Properties
- Increase Revenue
- Save Their Time
- Save Money
To talk to us about achieving these 7 things in your business with a property photography and marketing subscription from Focal, click here.
1. Attract More Vendors
For most estate agents, winning new instructions is the lifeline of their business. A study by ValPal revealed how vendors make snap judgments about potential estate agents based on their websites and the things they see during their online research.
“If the website is beautiful, they’re more likely to be able to present the home at its best.”
Not only do our brains process images 60,000x faster than text, 90% of what the brain receives and processes is visual! It’s your photography and other visuals that help a vendor to decide if your website is indeed “beautiful”.
When vendors are doing their online research (something 75% of them do before calling an estate agent), it’s your photography that guides their decision as to whether you’re a YES or a NO.
The study revealed that vendors place 5x more importance on photos than they do on an agent’s background and ethos.
Professional photography attracts more vendors but the increase in your stats (attracting more buyers, selling faster & selling at a higher price) are what helps them to choose you over your competitors.
2. Attract More Buyers
Estate Agents using a full property photography service like Focal can receive up to 5x more clicks on their property listings. Your vendors want to hear statistics like these. Having the ability to achieve these kinds of results are what make it easier for a vendor to choose you over another agency.
The more clicks your listing gets, the more viewings you’ll book. The more viewings you book, the closer you get to securing the sale.
A property listing is only as good as the amount of interest it attracts. Even Rightmove describe your property photos as essential to making an impression on potential buyers.
60% of a buyer’s time on a listing is spent looking at the photos. Outside of price, the quality and attractiveness of your photos are what entices buyers.
However, producing attractive, superior quality photography is no walk in the park. It’s not as simple as picking up a camera, pointing and shooting! Whilst there are techniques anyone can use to improve their property photography, an experienced professional property photographer knows best how to stage a property, what equipment and settings to use for the best possible end photo, how to frame the shot properly and how to edit for maximum conversion.
3. Sell Properties Faster
3 weeks faster.
That’s how much quicker properties being sold with professional photography can sell.
This is mostly down to the fact that professionally taken photos attract more buyers and the more buyers you attract, the sooner you’re likely to find the one who closes.
Like achieving more clicks, selling faster is another prospect vendors love to hear.
4. Dramatically Boost Perceived Value Of Properties
AXA carried out an experiment where they tested the impact of simple home staging. They carried out a “mini makeover” with an hour’s worth of property staging and showed photos of the property before and after.
The results – participants thought estimated the property value with the home staged photos at 21% higher than the photos without staging.
21% higher in real terms is like selling a property for £220,000 versus £180,00.
This type of home staging is something that a great property photography service like Focal will use. Whether it’s adding splashes of colour to a room or removing off-putting items like fridge magnets, a professional photographer can and will spend the extra time to prepare the property for optimal photos.
This is time that most estate agents just can’t afford to use on every property they sell; and unlike a professional photographer, the things required for effective staging aren’t necessarily as easy to spot to someone who doesn’t have extensive experience photographing homes.
5. Increase Revenue
At Focal, our clients generate up to £4 for every £1 spent with us.
A great property photography service like ours goes beyond images and photo editing alone and also offers practical advice and guidance on successful implementation of visual marketing like photography, floor plans and property trailers.
Professional photography properly implemented has an extremely positive impact on your bottom line.
6. Save Money
Many agents realise that high quality property photography is beneficial to their business. This can mean that they take their own photos, often with quality equipment, but without the experience of a professional, they end up with photos that require a lot of editing to be effective.
Whilst it is essential to give all your property photos a basic edit, photos taken by a non-professional often require more extensive editing which, once you factor in the cost plus the time spent taking photos yourself, can be very expensive in the long run.
With some photo editing services charging as much as £2.60 per photo for full editing with a short turnaround, the cost of non-professional photography can quickly stack up and result in you spending more than you expected and losing the time you would otherwise be spending on revenue generating activities like lead generation.
7. Save Time
The commodity money just can’t buy.
The average sized property in the UK takes around 45-60 minutes to photograph properly. Extra time is also needed for effective property preparation and equipment set up.
Now add on the time to choose the best photos and upload them to a photo editing service for correction. This is around 1.5 hours (minimum) spent on photography per property! Even more time if you edit your own photography.
Most estate agents simply don’t have this time to spare. Sometimes the result of this is lower quality, rushed photography, sometimes it’s increased stress at work.
Getting back these 1.5+ hours per property makes professional photography a no-brainer especially when superior photography that achieves better business results also comes hand in hand with it.