Picture Examples

All of the pictures shown below (including ours) were copied and pasted onto this page directly from the MLS at the exact same resolution as seen on the MLS and Realtor.com. They are all un-retouched photos by us. These are not only what Realtors see, this is what the public sees. If you were a buyer, would these pictures make you want to go see these homes?

$300,000 range home

January 2008

Mid-$400k Home
Mid-$400k Home			Note here - We never place front pictures unless they are so bad even the sellers cannot recognize their own homes. But believe me, we see as many incredibly poor exterior pictures as we do interior pictures.

High $500K Home

High $700K Home

Mid-$600,000 home

How hard is it to crop a picture?

Mid-$600K home

Mid-$500K home

You might find this hard to believe, but we see this all the time on the MLS! The agent never bothered to submit a single photo of the home. I cannot think of a worse marketing blunder, but again, this is not uncommon. You will always see 8, high quality pictures on every one of our homes! We take our marketing responsibilities seriously!

These are also copied and pasted directly from the MLS at the exact same resolution as those above. These are just a couple of examples, but I can promise you can go to any home we have listed on the MLS at any price range and you will see the same quality photographs. We genuinely care about how our homes are presented to the world!

Even at a very low resolution, our pictures are always sharp, crisp, light and bright, and never blurry or grainy. We edit every single picture we post to our site, the MLS, and Realtor.com to make sure they really stand out. This usually means brightening, refining the colors, and cropping. Our pictures are not only a representation of our listings, they also reflect the pride we take in our marketing and our company as a whole!

In case you think I just "cherry picked" our best pictures, I included two media room pictures in the bottom row. Dark media rooms are always the toughest shots to work with, as were these. They tend to have low lighting and no windows. But they don't have to look like a dark, spooky, cave. It takes time, patience, some software editing, and the willingness to do it to get the pictures to look like this.

All of our agents are on the MLS every single day searching for homes for our clients, editing our own listings, and just staying on top of the market with sales and new listings. We have seen so many unbelievably bad pictures over the years, we decided to start posting some of them to our site so the public can see what we see. Keep in mind, this is just a miniscule sampling of terrible pictures because they are only from one small area of the MLS!

Do we become frustrated when we see this kind of sloppy marketing? You bet we do! We take so much pride in our listings, to see things like this just makes us shake our heads in disbelief! I have often wondered if these sellers don't know what is happening on their homes or just don't care, but common sense tells me it must be the prior, not the latter.

You might be wondering why pictures like this bother us. Those aren't our listings in the first place, so why should we care? Well, we do care. We aren't talking about trading cards here. These homes are probably the largest single asset most people will ever own and we believe they should be handled as such by every Realtor, not just us. Is it any surprise our profession is often held in low regard by the general public?

We have very deep convictions about how a listing agent should market any home he or she is trusted with ... regardless of price! Sellers are relying on their Realtor to market their home with at least some resemblance of professionalism and it is the responsibility of the Realtor to do so. When we see things like this, it disappoints us.

I am not saying that every home is presented this way on the MLS and we are the only ones who take pride in our listings. There are lots of great companies out there. But there are also way too many companies who just don't care to take the time to do it right.

If you are wondering if I have any reservations about posting these unbelievably poor pictures from other Realtors on our site, my answer is a resounding "No". In fact, I hope the agents who posted these pictures to the MLS visit our site and see them. Maybe it will put some pressure on them to take a little pride in what they do.

By the way, we also see hundreds of incredibly bad front pictures of homes we would love to share with you, however, we would never embarrass any homeowner by the actions of their Realtor. So if you do see the front picture of a home here, it is so bad, even the homeowner wouldn't be able to recognize it.

We are going to carry on with our three part mission statement (part of which follows) and hopefully, we will encourage some Realtors to join us along the way.

We will continue to raise the bar within the Real Estate industry in regards to professionally marketing properties locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally!