Home buyers list photos as one of the most valuable features when looking for properties online with 87% of people saying they’re important in helping them with their search.
But images of interior rooms and exterior facades are standard for real estate listings. You need to do more to make your images stand out and grab attention.
Taking a wide-angle shot of each room is no longer enough. Real estate photography trends continue changing as new technology becomes readily available. Staying ahead of that technology lets you integrate it into your work before your competition.
Check out these trends to look out for in 2019 to make your real estate photos special.
Mobile-Friendly Websites
Your images look great on a website. But how do they translate to mobile device screens? Having a mobile-friendly website makes listings more appealing to 73% of people who use mobile sites or apps during the home search.
What makes a photo mobile-ready? It’s one that loads quickly and adjusts to fit the size of the screen easily. You want quality images that are lightweight or quick loading.
Regular images are often too big for a mobile device screen, which makes it difficult to see the entire image. Potential buyers have to scroll around to see all parts of the image, which makes it more difficult to visualize the house. Images that aren’t responsive may look blurry for mobile users.
Non-mobile optimized photos may turn away potential buyers who search for homes on mobile devices. They don’t want to wait for images to load or scroll multiple times to see the full picture.
3-D Virtual Tours
It’s tough to visualize yourself inside of a home with two-dimensional photos. You can sometimes piece together the layout based on what you see in the images. But it’s not the same as walking through the rooms and seeing how they flow together.
Using photography to create a three-dimensional tour lets potential buyers see how the rooms fit together. They get a better sense of the flow and how it might work for their family. The tour offers a 3D look at the house with the option to click into different areas of the home.
A similar option is to use a real estate video tour. This option lets viewers feel like they’re walking through the home. They can get a better sense of the setup of the house.
Aerial Real Estate Photography
Shots of the home from the front give potential buyers a glimpse at the architecture and facade. But it can be challenging to get a sense of the overall property from ground-level images.
Take to the skies to get aerial shots that show the entire property from different angles. You don’t need to hire a pilot to get the perfect shots from above the home. Drones outfitted with cameras let you easily snap the perfect shot.
Studies show that 83% of sellers would give preference to an agent using drones. Offering aerials from drones can help attract more selling clients and grab more attention from buyers.
The camera drones feature gyroscopes to keep the cameras stable for clear, focused images. A remote lets the camera person control the drone to get overhead views from different angles.
Some photographers use drones indoors to film a video of houses as part of tours or promo videos. This takes more skill because you have to control the drone in a confined space. An out-of-control drone can cause damage to walls, ceilings, light fixtures, and other items in the home.
Learning to fly a drone well and position it to capture appealing real estate images is a marketable skill for your business. It can help you land more clients for your real estate photography business.
Virtual Staging
Professionally staging a home helps sell it better. It makes the space look inviting and more appealing.
Staging also helps people visualize themselves living in the home better than cluttered photos or completely empty homes. The carefully curated furniture, lighting, and decor pieces also help potential buyers visualize the scale of the home.
If you’re dealing with an empty home, you have the option to use a staging company to furnish the home. But another growing trend is virtually staging the homes after you photograph them.
Virtual staging saves you money over traditional staging. You also don’t have to deal with physically moving and arranging furniture.
Virtual staging involves superimposing three-dimensional images of the selected furnishings onto the photos of the home. When done well, the renderings look very realistic. But it can also look very fake if you don’t know what you’re doing.
This type of staging requires special software to create a virtual design. Hiring someone who specializes in virtual staging makes the process easier.
Learning the software yourself can set you apart from others in the field. You’ll also save money over time after your initial investment in the software because you won’t have to pay someone else to do the virtual staging.
Sharing on Social Media
What realtors do with photos after they are taken is also changing. The standard spot for the home images is on the real estate listing on the website. More real estate agents are using those professional real estate images in other places, especially on social media.
About 77% of real estate businesses use social media with Facebook being the most popular at 97%. Sharing real estate photos on social media gives home listings more exposure.
Social media sharing is also effective for real estate photographers to promote their businesses. Quality images make a major impact on social media because they catch the eye. That makes it an ideal platform for real estate.
Social media is also effective because it’s free. You can create business accounts on many platforms that offer analytics to show you which images get the best reactions.
Incorporating the images into blog posts can also help you promote your business and listings. Only 9% of all realtors have blogs, so using images in that format help set you apart from others in the field.
Improve Your Real Estate Photos
Are you staying on trend with your home photos? Or are you falling behind while others capture the attention of more prospective buyers?
Real estate photography is so much more than just snapping pictures of homes at the right angle. Staying on top of photography trends helps sell more houses, land more clients, and sets you apart from the others. Check out more real estate photography tips to improve your results.
