I have spent a lot of time this week looking at the local MLS and I am still scratching my head. I have to ask, “Do you really not see that the walls are distorted,the windows are blown and the house looks like it is leaning down hill?”  This is becoming more and more common and I just don’t understand why.

When I think of marketing, I think of ads and billboards.  Those things that grab your attention and make you want the item that is being marketed.  Isn’t this what you think of?

When you are marketing a home (the largest single purchase most people will make in a lifetime, BTW), doesn’t it make sense to spend a few dollars and grab you potential buyer by the ear and scream “Look at me?”  You are not going to do it with images that are dark, blurry, fuzzy, distorted and generally not showing the house well.

Take a few minutes and view our tours.  MLS Photos is a professional service that only provides Real Estate Photography.  We do one thing so we can do it right.  Stop with the hacked tours and if not us, try someone who will give you quality images.  It will serve you well in the future.

Quality images do make a difference. Just ask the buyers!

Take the leap today. Call us and schedule your tour!!

Yesterday I went to Palm Coast to shoot a home for Karen at Lighthouse Realty Associates. The home is a beautiful 2 story home build in 2005 completely of poured concrete. The home owner was telling me the walls are a full 9 inches think. You will notice there are no windows on the street side of the home except for a couple small windows for light.

The home owner told me this was to cut out the noise from the street and he says it works very well. The beach side has lots of glass and it is tinted “turtle” glass to cut dow on the light coming out of them at night. This is so it does not confuse the Sea Turtles when they hatch. They need to see the moon and go out to sea and I guess the light from homes can be a problem. Not on this home though!!

Feel free to check out the tour here:

Quality images do make a difference. Just ask the buyers!

I was working on some images and talking with my brother in law tonight. He is looking at buying a home and has been looking at the MLS and many real estate websites. I struck me funny when he started critiquing the pictures used on the website so we started talking.

He was really unimpressed with the quality and wanted to know why more Realtors don’t use real estate photographers. I really did try to explain it but it was really interesting to hear someone outside our industry talking about the low quality images on many of these listing.

I know I look at them and think “Wow, that is terrible” but I am a photographer. So I asked him, would you go and look at that house? He said “Maybe but not likely because I can not tell if it is 3what I want from the pictures. I am not going to waste my time most likely.”

So Realtors. Brokers and FSBO’s, take notice. The buyers are noticing the image quality issues in the MLS and other listing sites. They are passing up homes based on these images and you ARE losing money by not spending a little.

Market like you mean it!! Market with help from MLS Photos and lets SELL that house!!!

It has been a crazy week here at MLS Photos. I have several shoots lined up, both commercial and residential and will be working on Saturday this week. Along with trying to get that stuff squared away, the website has kept me very busy as I am working to nail down the best way to get online ordering secure and working.

Currently if you want to order from our site, we have it setup to run through our PayPal account and that is completely secure but does take a few extra steps to finish the order. I have been playing with the idea of a e-cart but am not sure yet if we are going to that extreme.

If you are ready to order a tour and are unsure about using the paypal cart, please feel free to e-mail or call us and we can get you squared away that way.

I hope you are all enjoying the new site layout and design as much as we are. If you see something that isn’t quiet right or would like a feature not here, please let us know In the meantime, we will continue to refine our process and look forward to working with you all.

Remember to check out the pricing page to get a great deal on your next tour.

Are you marketing smaller, lower priced homes in a market that is bloated and full of large homes? If you are, then you need an edge. Last week I had an agent tell me she only had listings that were “..not worth spending the money on for tours. They are too small and low priced.”

That got me thinking. Why is it she does not understand that these are precisely the homes that need to be marketed with virtual tours or lots of great images? If the price is lower, the home is smaller and that only marketing that you do is a few poor quality images, do you think you are going to close that property? You might but it will sit on the market a lot longer than if you had a great virtual tour and images to grab peoples attention with.

Why not add to that a single property website, marketing on the social networks and all the best real estate websites? Use some great images from a true professional photographer, a great tour interface to stuff those images into and sell the property sooner.

Give us a call so we can share with you the products and services we offer to help you SELL your properties or listings not just let them sit there. Order your virtual tour or images today at MLS Photos.

Quality images start with exposure, crisp and bright lightand straight lines.

I don’t know who did it or when but I know it has been done. Many, many Realtors, Brokers and Home Owners selling properties have been somehow convinced that image quality is not that important on your listing. This is completely not true.

Put yourself in the position of the buyer and and then look at the MLS or listings. Start with your area but not your own listings. If you pay attention to the images you will start to see a pattern of low quality images that will NOT attract buyers. Sorry to say it but it is true. You CAN NOT market a property with these type of images.

Go and talk to the top sellers in your office and ask they do about images. Most of them will tell you that they pay for a Virtual Tour company or real estate photographer to shoot them. When I ask Realtors why they don’t use a photographer, I constantly hear “Well the market is slow, houses are not selling. I just don’t have the money to spend.”

Here is my response to that folks, “If you don’t do something to bring up the quality of your listings, your sales are not going to improve.” Your own National Association of Realtors will tell you that 90% of buyers start online and 90% of those have said still photography is the most important thing on the listing.

Properly exposed means no nuclear war outside the windows and even, clean light.

The buyers want to see the home online and if it looks bad, even if it isn’t, they will not be calling you to see it. That is been proven time and time again. It is basic marketing folks. You don’t see Wal Mart or Target stuffing their ads with blurry, poorly lit or skewed images do you? No, because they are trying to get you in the door.

Get them in the door folks. When it comes to it, hire a photographer not a guy that builds tours so they can get in front of you to sell you websites and frilly add on’s. If you have any question about how to get better images in the NorthEast Florida area, call me. I will explain the difference between what we do and what the “other guys” in the area are pitching.

Forget about fluff, order your tour at a great price, the highest quality images and the best customer service in the the St. Augustine, Jacksonville, and whole 1st Coast Area.

Detail Images can make all the difference in your listings.

Why is it Virtual Tour and Real Estate Photography companies are always after you to hire them? Money right? You are right when you think that they are looking to make money but the side effect to that can be beneficial to you as well. Most good virtual tour companies or professional real estate photographers work hard to market you listings through images, social marketing, the internet and beyond.

MLS Photos is no different in that respect. We are here to market your listings, make money and help you make money. After all, more visibility of your listings will translate into sales. It is just the way it works.

But how is MLS Photos different than the other virtual tour companies? We offer something many of them do not. We offer you customer service beyond great. MLS Photos is as many of you know, a off shoot of Old City Photography. The only photography that MLS Photos does is MLS and Listing photography so we can really specialize in it.

You will see that our prices are lower than almost everyone in the area. This is not because we offer a lower quality product, in fact, our images completely eclipse any of the virtual tour companies in the area. That is because MLS Photos uses professional photographers and then teaches them to put tours together, not the other way around. Our prices are lower but our quality is higher. Hrm, seems like a no brainer to us.

So check us out. Order a tour today and see the difference for your self. If you are not happy, tell us. If you are, tell everyone you meet.

Some of you may already be following our blog on Old City Photography but we have decided to break the business into pieces and as such have developed MLS Photos as the new mlsphotos.info”target=”_self”rel=”external”title=”Real Estate Photography” >Real Estate Photography arm of our business. We feel that Old City Photography’s Blog site should become more dedicated to the commercial side of the business so have started this second blog that will be dedicated to our Real Estate Photography work.

With that I invite you all to follow both blogs for information from Real Estate Photography, Product Photography, and other commercial work. Along with this change you will see a more directed approach to how each is used so that you get the information you are seeking without having to sort though many different blog posts trying to find thing pertinent to you or your needs and interests.

We hope you will find the new format a little more user friendly and look forward to bring you more images, news, special prices and fun stories along the way!!

~Chris