West Suburban - Naperville Illinois Real Estate

Marketing 101 in the Western Suburbs

I was recently talking to another agent in the office about listings that only offer a picture of the front of the house... We agreed that we always think: " it may be a bad agent... or it may be a bad house... I'm not really sure"

You see, in the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois (MLSNI) we can add a total of seven pictures.. as well as a virtual tour to the listing. Not everybody likes virtual tours... but pictures are something that everyone wants (buyers and agents included) It costs nothing to use this feature and it can be done at the same time as the actual listing. I was wondering what other people thought about this and posed the question to a national group of real estate agents in one of my networking groups.

These real estate agents all said that if the MLS allows 7 (or more) pictures and the listing doesn't include that many, they assume that something is wrong with the property. This is a real problem for those sellers in a slower market and it's one that they are generally not aware of.

One agent from Florida said that if they talk about the pool in the remarks but don't show a picture they assume that something is not right with the pool.

Another top agent said they definitely make assumptions based on the amount or lack of pictures. Like if the agent only uses interior pictures (or exterior only)

Of the 17 responses to my question 17 (100%) of the agents responded that they assume the worst when photos are not used properly......

One other thought is that these pictures automatically propogate throughout the system, showing up on real estate related sites all over the Internet (assuming that the agent elects to do that...that will be another marketing blog topic!) including Realtor.com if the agent pays a little extra for the expanded listings.

Sometimes it's what you don't say (or show) that influences people..

Posted by Angus at 7:45 AM Del.icio.us