Part Four - The Anticlimax

This post is a sum of PG Listings.ca, because the past three posts really just talk very vaguely about how the site came about and the route that was taken. Truth is, the concept to build a local area listing site for real estate is not a new one, so I can't take credit there, and the idea to build something for Prince George was suggested by my family, so again, not mine.

My parents were moving to Creston and having a hard time finding a place, because not only did you have to look on MLS, but you also had to go to every agents personal website, along with private listing sites, which is truly a pain in the ass, especially if you are over fifty and not all that comfortable on the computer. To top it off, on each of these listing sites were truly terrible images, images so bad that if you actually wanted any sense of what the house was like, you would have to go there in person - which makes me think that perhaps agents take awful pictures on purpose.....hmmm.

Lets see if I can find you an example. Okay, here is a classic interior shot, taken by a realtor for an unnamed listing. And this isn't that bad an example even. Keep in mind the ancient Sumerian proverb "Images taken with a handy digital imaging device are worth one thousand words". So here you have an interior image who's purpose is to attract potential home buyers, enticing them to take that next step, all in a 640x480 frame.

I hope you find the advertising impact less than impressive. Here we have a $215,000 dollar home who's kitchen is being marketed by a point and shoot digital camera file, unprocessed and sized to 640x480. Keep these figures in mind because we're going to run through several other examples over the next few posts. First I would like to illustrate my point by pulling up one of my images from my most recent shoot, which is viewable full screen on PG Listings.ca.



I kept the size smaller than it's maximum, because I didn't feel the need to emphasize my point. If I was a home buyer looking at new homes in the area, my visual assessment of the quality and appeal of the kitchen (a pretty major feature) will be based solely on these images, and when it comes time to take the next step ie. selecting which homes to view in person, my list will be greatly influenced by my aforementioned visual assessments. As an interesting side note, the kitchen photograph from PG Listings is from a house that is actually priced lower than the one above, but we as consumers unconsciously connect the higher quality image with a higher price tag automatically, because that is what we are used to seeing in marketing of any product.

My point is that major advertising efforts that are dependent on visual assessments to attract potential clients should not be based on low quality images. It's a simple concept that has been used in almost every market online for some time, but surprisingly when it comes to the largest investment of them all, it's absent.

Over the next several posts, I will be introducing other images from active listings in Prince George and comparing them to images I have taken in a similarly priced home. Real estate photography works, and has been used all over North America for years, and there is no reason why it can't work here, because consumer behavior is nearly identical.

Daniel Abraham
www.pglistings.ca