Today as I sat in my real estate sales meeting, watching a virtual caravan of the most recent listings in our office, I heard two different agents advise as the admin flipped through the photos, “New photos are coming soon.” Right now these listings are live on MLS, potential buyers are viewing them, but they are not the best they can be. The professional photos should be up in a week.
Show the best photos from day 1 of a new listing
This situation reminds me of the old, “I’ll see how the showings go this weekend before I decide if I’m going to stage.” homeowner mentality. How is it that so few “experienced” agents seem to understand that the best activity is always going to be at the beginning of the listing period? Let’s look at this chart by Redfin on the first week of listing activity.
The red line indicates when the home is first listed. The green line indicated activity after it has been updated.
New listings have four times the activity of updated listing
The strategy of updating photos, prices, or staging the home at any time other than BEFORE the listing goes live simply puts the listing at a disadvantage. Holding off means that home sellers have one quarter the chance of success as if they had done the required activity at the time of listing.
One of the things that really makes me crazy in my market is getting listing alerts for a particular neighborhood where I have interested buyers, only to realize that there are no photos. While the agent may have the best professional images imaginable, and the home may be perfect for my home buyers, chances are they will never know. By the time the photos are updated, the listing won’t be fresh. New photos isn’t one of the activities that puts the listing back on our hot sheet. I’m not likely to go back and look in a few days to see if the listing now has photos, neither are most other agents, or potential home buyers. The opportunity is simply gone.
Don’t wait to update your listing, make it fabulous right out of the gate.
Professionally staging each listing PRIOR to listing, getting professional photos PRIOR to listing, and pricing the home properly AT THE TIME of listing is the key to maximizing the final sale price and profitability of any sale.