The National Association of Realtors in the US recently released their annual Home Buyer and Seller Generational Trends Report for 2017. It has some interesting things to say about the popularity of real estate marketing tools like photography, floor plans, videos and virtual tours.
The NAR also surveyed people about the features they rank as “very useful” when looking at property listings, and here’s what that survey found: 89% of buyers looking at properties online rated photos as the most “useful” feature, higher even than detailed information about the property, and twice as useful as contact details for the agent selling the property.
“As a result of an internet home search, buyers most often walked through the home that they viewed online. Buyers 51 years and younger saw the exterior of homes because of searching online for properties. The most important website feature was photos for nine in 10 buyers under the age of 62.”
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® 2017 Home Buyer and Seller Generational Trends
What does this mean? I am certain that no real estate agent would consider advertising a home they are selling without including their own contact details. However, as far as buyers are concerned, more of them consider the real estate photos to be “very useful”. Even more so than they do contact information itself.
Would any Naples real estate agent think about doing a real estate marketing campaign without including detailed information about the property? Certainly not, however, more buyers consider the real estate photos to “very useful”. Even more so than they do detailed information about the home they are looking at.
By far, the first step taken during the home buying process was looking online for properties for sale.
“Using mobile applications during the home search was common among younger generations of buyers. Fifty-eight percent of buyers 36 years and younger found their homes through a mobile application (down from 71 percent last year). Forty-six percent of buyers 37 to 51 years, 33 percent for those 52 to 61, and 24 percent of those 62 to 70 years, found their homes by using a mobile application, if they used a mobile device to search.”
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® 2017 Home Buyer and Seller Generational Trends
If an agent is doing an open house for that listing they would certainly include information about that, yet buyers would still prefer to see images more than they would the times for that agent’s open houses.
So here’s where we are at – every real estate agent in the Naples and the surrounding areas is going to include things like: – their own contact information – specific details about the property – times for upcoming open houses … but so many won’t think about the quality of the real estate photography, which buyers seem to consider more important than all of the things an agent will include without a second thought.
So if photos are “very useful”, does the quality of those photos matter? I think it does and that’s because buyers can see the difference good quality photos make.
They may not be able to articulate in technical terms what they like about a particular image, but given that real estate photos are the premiere feature that buyers find useful then it stands to reason that better imaging will attract more buyers to that property in the same way that a brand new Ferrari attracts second glances from people when it’s driving down the road. Well, maybe not in Naples!
Or in the way that we like to get dressed up and look our best when we’re having our portrait taken. So when it comes time to put a marketing campaign together don’t settle for ordinary Real Estate Photography, and don’t even accept good photos. The only images you should be using are the very best, and that’s because the photos are the most important feature of a real estate marketing campaign.
Consider them a direct extension of your personal brand as a Naples Real Estate agent. Another key aspect of your Digital Footprint.