Tips 1 and 2 For Creating Better Real Estate Videos

Have you ever browsed a website and seen images that appear stretched out or compressed like a fun house mirror?  How about viewing videos or slide shows with these types of images in them?   That’s caused by images being uploaded without them being resized for the website in which they are viewed.    Many of you may be familiar with this concept on your home TV.  You may have a widescreen TV, which has an aspect ratio of 16:9, but are viewing a TV show shot in traditional, old-school 4:3 ratio.   What does that mean?  To fit your widescreen TV, the show is stretched wide to fill the screen, and throws off the appearance of the show.

Tip 1.  Preserve Aspect Ratios

Well, in online marketing, preserving the aspect ratio is key to avoiding the distortion that can occur.   According to the real estate photography pros at the RE Snapshot blog, preserving aspect ratios in PhotoShop is rather straight forward.   Click the “constrain proportions” in the Image Size tab (under ‘Image’ in the top navigation).

Tip 2 – Resize Photos

Another important step is to resize the image to the dimensions for where its going to be used.   This too prevents the web browser from resizing the image to fit its location.   Resizing photos can be done with PhotoShop and other photo editing tools.   For your PropertyPreviews videos, for example, the minimum size of photos we accept is 640 x 480 pixels, but 1024 x 768 pixels is preferred.

See For Yourself

Try taking two sets of images, one set in their original format and another in a resized format to compare the difference in quality.   Taking the time to do these steps will improve the quality of your marketing materials, and increase the perceived value of your listing.   That may be just enough to get a prospect to act and contact you for more info.

Tips For Shooting Better Real Estate Photography

Here are three tips to make a big room look smaller, courtesy of the RE Snapshot Blog.

1. Use the 3-Wall Rule. Try to capture three walls in your scene to show more dimension.
2. Try Shooting at a Slight Angle. When shooting at a slight angle to a room, the lines of the room help create visual depth to the room. This helps make the room look longer by adding perspective.
3. Use a Wide Angle Lens. To achieve some of these tips, a wide angle lens makes the job much easier.

There are some compelling examples of agent-shot photography and the same room reshot by professionals.  Here’s a sample before and after shot:

The top photo is a very nice kitchen, but due to limitations of the camera, the lighting is uneven (note the bright light coming into the window).  Also the focal length of the lens does not allow the entire kitchen to be displayed.   So, using the rules above, there are not three walls, and a wide angle lens was not used.  It does seem that an angle was used when shooting.

The second photo is the same scene as above, but you can clearly see the use of  the Three Wall rule and a wide angle lens.  This is a much more dramatic and complete representation of the kitchen, and visually much more appealing to a prospective buyer.

Sow whether you use professional photography or do it yourself, by employing these techniques you can present your listing in the best light and hopefully engage more prospective buyers to contact you for more information.

What do you think?  Let us know in the comments.

Why Aren’t Buyers Calling From My Video??

Because some of you make it very hard for buyers to do so!   You want prospective buyers to contact you after seeing your PropertyPreviews video, right? Make it easier for them by adding your telephone contact information in the Phone Book section of your profile.

We do NOT recommend ONLY putting it in the property details for a few reasons:

1.  Other Sites Can’t See It. When we syndicate listings to other sites, they want to display your telephone number(s) and if they are not in the Phone Book, it harder for prospects to find you. A blank will be where they expect your phone number.

2.  Potential MLS Issues. You may violate your local MLS rules by “branding” your listing with your name and or telephone number within the property details.  If you use the Phone Book, we automatically suppress information that may get you in trouble with your MLS.

3.   ePostcard Issues. Your PropertyPreviews ePostcard webpage won’t show your telephone number where buyers expect to see it, and that only hurts you and your sellers.   You drive traffic to this page, so have complete contact info on it for buyers to reach you.

Go ahead and update your Phone Book, and your ePostcard will be updated immediately, as will all sites that received the link to your ePostcard.   Other sites may take a day or two for the new data to be refreshed.  Going forward, all your new videos will have the correct information with no further action on your part.   You can always change, update or add telephone numbers to your Phone Book.

To take full advantage of your PropertyPreviews video, and the power of the marketing we can do for you, please use the Phone Book features in your profile to make it easier for prospects to contact you!

PropertyPreviews-10 Tips to improve your photos in 10 posts: Tip #2

Give your listing online curb appeal.  The front photo of a listing is one of the most important photos in my opinion.  If it captures interest, in will lead to the online shopper to go further down the rabbit hole to view and learn more about that listing.

This tip is mainly for listings where the garage is attached to the front of the house.  A garage can take up a good majority of a front photo.  Lets face it – a garage is a garage.  There is nothing great about it, but you need to show it.  Most people will take a front photo straight on giving the house and garage equal line of sight and making the garage appear large.  What we want to achieve with this tip is a different line of sight, but still capturing the whole house and garage.  If the garage is on the left of the house, you want to position yourself all the way to the right of the house.  This way you are focusing on the house, and while the garage is still in your picture, it is not overpowering the house.  This gives your listing online curb appeal.  Thanks for reading and Happy Selling.

Below is an example.  To be fair I used a standard point and shoot camera on this fine overcast day in the North Midwest.

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Cheers,

Tom

PropertyPreviews-10 tips to improve your photos in 10 posts: Tip #1

One of the main categories we want to explore in the PropertyPreviews blog is to help Real Estate professionals show their listing in the best possible way. We want your prospects to want to see your listing in person.  In the next 10 photography blog posts we will give you tips you can use today to produce engaging photos.

Tip #1:  Prepping the house just before you are ready to shoot. I know there may be some listings where there is just no hope in making it look appealing. However, in this tip I’m not asking you to clean and rearrange the whole house.  It is up to you to explain to your clients your expectations before you arrive at their home to take photos.  There are a couple small prepping changes that go a long way to make the home look more appealing.  First, go throughout the home and turn on all the lights possible.  A well lit house is always going to look more appealing in a picture.  The second easy home prep tip is to remove all trash cans from the view of the camera.  Garbage is never an eye appealing item, and can make a kitchen look dirty at a brief glance.  Thirdly, put all toilet seat lids down.  Bathroom shots are hard enough, an exposed toilet seat is not going to make the picture look any better.  These may seem like small tasks, but we see many pictures that come into PropertyPreviews.com that could use these tips to make their free video look even better.

Remember to subscribe to our RSS feed or email updates to get all of our latest posts.  Happy Selling!!