Is a property photo always worth a 1000 words, to a ‘for sale by owner’, an agent, or anyone else for that matter? Advertisers tend to forget that buyers need motivation to tour a property, that they should not be prejudging it based solely on the photo presentation or virtual tour. Photographs should pique a buyer’s curiosity, validate the opinion that has been formed from reading the text, then entice them to view the product.
One black and white exterior photo
As a real estate agent who launched his career in 1979, and now the publisher of a niche property, e-commerce website, I am amazed at how the use of photos in advertising properties for sale has evolved. Of course thirty years ago we didn’t have the luxury of the Internet to advertise a vendor’s property. The usual practice was to periodically place a newspaper classified ad in an effort to generate phone calls, and to add our property listing to the office display ad that usually was published every Saturday in the local newspaper. The ad, as a rule, amounted to a few lines of copy highlighting the most important features, and included an exterior black and white photo of the property.
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