Don’t Forget to Photograph the Neighborhood
December 8th, 2007
Hojin Chang’s neighborhood bench photo in the flickr group made me remember that I’ve never pointed out the importance of photographing the neighborhood. My wife Levi has this saying that “you have to sell the neighborhood before you can sell the home.” Which is obvious when you think about it. Buyers have to be attracted to the neighborhood before they are going to by a home there. On our listings we always promote the strong points of the neighborhood.
Hojin’s simple photo of the bench on the walking trail next to the lake says a lot about this neighborhood. It has a big open feeling.
Now days since most slide-show virtual tour formats can accommodate large numbers of photos there’s really no reason to not have plenty of photos of the neighborhood on listings. Of course not every neighborhood is as photogenic as the one shown here.
7 Responses to “Don’t Forget to Photograph the Neighborhood”
Hojin December 8th, 2007 at 12:53 pm #
Thanks for the mention Larry. I’ve really enjoyed reading your blog this past year and have learned a lot.
Doug Cranmer December 8th, 2007 at 6:02 pm #
Good observation of a great image which illustrates your wife Levi’s point very well. I think that we’re sometimes a bit too focused on the rote of the LR, BR, kitchen. Thomas Grubba made a good point in a post recently about trying to spend time capturing the “mood” of a room, or that of a home. That’s something that will use a photographer’s artistic talents well and benefit the end client.
Thanks for the very on point observation Larry and thanks to Hojin for helping us step “out of the usual”.
Patrick Hake December 9th, 2007 at 12:53 am #
I never really considered adding photos of the neighborhood with my listings. Now that you mention it, it seems like a great idea.
Thank you for the inspiration
Tim Thompson December 9th, 2007 at 9:25 am #
Very good point indeed, and thanks for pointing that out. Sometimes the obvious isn’t so obvious!
Vince DeStefano December 10th, 2007 at 5:09 am #
Larry good point, Here in Australia there are lot of man made lakes being built in new residential developments. Over the last 6 months I have been building a libary up of marketing shots from these new developments. at least once a week an agent will ask if I have any photos of the lakes or similar images.
Its great because we charge them a license fee.
josh December 10th, 2007 at 5:08 pm #
This is interesting because I’ve always wondered why ‘location’ isn’t emphasized more when you study real estate ads esp since we all know about the mantra about ‘buy the worst house in the best neighborhood.’
For an outsider, it can be really difficult to pick up why one house is ‘better’ because its in a ‘better neighborhood’ when none of the features that makes one neigborhood better than the other one is ever stated.
After thinking it over, the only reason I could come up with is that even if you succesfully sell the neighborhood, you still might not sell the house if there’s another house for sale in the same neighborhood.
Use Neighbourhood Photos to Help Sell a Home « Internet Marketing for Real Estate January 9th, 2008 at 9:38 pm #
[…] example, he recently posted a simple, yet important, reminder to real estate agents to include photos of a property’s neighbourhood when presenting a listing on the Internet. “Buyers have to be attracted to the neighborhood […]