In the rapidly evolving world of real estate, the way properties are presented online can significantly influence their marketability and sale price. As we navigate through 2024, certain photography trends have emerged as game-changers, offering realtors and real estate professionals innovative ways to showcase properties. Let’s explore these trends and how they can transform your real estate listings.
Harnessing Digital Marketing Tools
The digital landscape has become the primary battlefield for capturing the attention of potential buyers. Utilizing digital marketing tools such as single property websites, virtual house tours, and real estate walkthrough videos not only elevates the presentation of listings but also meets the growing expectation of an immersive online experience. Incorporating these tools into your marketing strategy can significantly shorten the sales cycle and enhance the visibility of your properties.
Taking to the Skies with Drone Photography
Drone photography has revolutionized property showcasing, offering breathtaking aerial views that highlight the property’s architecture and its surrounding landscape. This trend has democratized aerial photography, making it accessible and affordable. By adding drone images and videos to your listings, you can provide a comprehensive view of your property, appealing to the desires of potential buyers to see every angle before making a decision. Here are the key benefits of using drone photography in real estate:
Aerial Perspectives: Drone photography provides stunning aerial views of a property, showcasing its layout, size, and the surrounding area in a way that ground-level photography cannot. This perspective can be particularly compelling for properties with significant land, scenic views, or unique landscapes.
Enhanced Marketing Material: High-quality aerial images make for striking marketing materials that can capture the attention of potential buyers. These images can be used on websites, in brochures, and across social media platforms to generate interest and attract a wider audience.
Increased Engagement: Properties marketed with drone photography tend to engage more viewers. The unique and dramatic presentation of aerial images can make listings stand out in crowded real estate markets, encouraging potential buyers to explore the property further.
Comprehensive Property Analysis: Drone photography can provide a comprehensive overview of a property, including its roofing, landscaping, and the condition of hard-to-reach areas. This can be especially useful for highlighting features such as pools, gardens, and backyards, as well as for identifying potential issues that might not be visible from the ground.
Cost-Effective: While high-quality drone photography is a professional service, it can be more cost-effective than traditional methods of achieving aerial views, such as hiring helicopters or planes. The relative affordability of drone services allows real estate agents and sellers to obtain premium marketing materials without excessive expenditure.
Quick and Convenient: Drones can quickly cover large areas and capture a variety of angles and views, making it a fast and efficient way to gather marketing material. This speed and flexibility can be particularly advantageous in the fast-paced real estate market.
Emotional Connection: By providing a bird’s-eye view of the property and its surroundings, drone photography can help potential buyers imagine their life in that space, creating an emotional connection even before they visit in person. This can be a powerful motivator in the purchasing decision.
Competitive Advantage: Utilizing drone photography can give listings a competitive edge in the market. Properties presented with high-quality aerial imagery are likely to be perceived as more desirable and can help agents and sellers differentiate their listings from others.
In summary, drone photography offers a range of benefits for real estate marketing, from providing unique perspectives and engaging content to enhancing the appeal of listings and offering a competitive edge. Its ability to showcase properties in a comprehensive and captivating manner makes it an invaluable tool in the real estate industry.
Creating Immersive Experiences with 360-Degree Photography
The demand for a more interactive and engaging viewing experience has led to the rise of 360-degree photography and virtual tours. These tools allow potential buyers to navigate through properties at their own pace, offering a realistic sense of space and layout. By integrating 360-degree views into your listings, you cater to the modern buyer’s need for detailed and immersive property exploration.
One of the most popular options for 360-degree views is the Zillow 3D Home® tours. Zillow 3D Home® tours are a feature on Zillow that allows prospective buyers to take a virtual 360-degree tour of a property. This technology has become increasingly popular for its ability to enhance the visibility of listings on the platform. Here are the key advantages of utilizing Zillow 3D Home tours for property listings:
Increased Exposure: Properties with Zillow 3D Home® tours tend to receive higher placement in Zillow search results. This increased visibility is because these tours are among the most sought-after features by renters on the platform. Zillow also offers a filter option for renters to view only listings that include a 3D tour, thereby enhancing the visibility of these listings even further.
Higher Engagement: Listings with 3D tours generate up to 48% more leads compared to those without. This heightened engagement can significantly reduce vacancy days, with a decrease of up to 36% in the time it takes to receive the first application.
Attracting Serious Prospects: A 3D Home® tour provides a realistic sense of the property, helping potential renters or buyers to better assess if it meets their needs. This means that those who decide to visit the property in person are more likely to have a genuine interest, thereby saving time and resources for property managers or sellers.
Meeting Modern Expectations: The current market has a growing expectation for digital and virtual viewing options. The trend towards digital savviness among renters and buyers was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which increased the demand for virtual tour options. This demand has persisted even after the pandemic, indicating a lasting shift in consumer behavior towards preferring remote property evaluation methods.
Scalability and Multi-Platform Marketing: Virtual tours can reach an unlimited audience without the need for in-person visits, making them a scalable solution for showcasing properties. Additionally, Zillow 3D Home® tours can be shared across various platforms, including social media and MLS listings, further amplifying their reach and effectiveness.
In summary, Zillow 3D Home® tours offer a compelling advantage for property listings, significantly impacting visibility, engagement, and the speed at which properties are rented or sold. The technology caters to the modern consumer’s expectations for virtual property evaluation, making it an essential tool for sellers and property managers aiming to maximize the performance of their listings.
Optimizing for the Mobile-First World
With the majority of property searches beginning on mobile devices, optimizing real estate photography for mobile viewing has never been more important. Ensuring that images are quick to load, visually appealing on smaller screens, and adaptable to various devices is crucial for capturing and retaining the attention of potential buyers browsing on their phones.
Innovating with Virtual Staging
Virtual staging has emerged as a cost-effective and efficient way to showcase properties in their best light. This technology allows you to furnish and decorate empty or outdated spaces digitally, making them more appealing to buyers. Virtual staging not only saves time and resources but also enables potential buyers to visualize themselves in the space, thereby enhancing the property’s appeal. Here are the key benefits of virtual staging in the real estate industry:
Cost Efficiency: Virtual staging is significantly less expensive than traditional staging, which involves renting furniture and decor to physically outfit a home. This makes it an accessible option for sellers and agents looking to enhance their property’s appeal without the high costs associated with physical staging.
Flexibility and Customization: Virtual staging allows for the easy customization of a space to suit different tastes and styles. A room can be virtually furnished in multiple styles to appeal to a broader range of potential buyers, showcasing the property’s versatility.
Enhanced Online Appeal: Since the majority of home buyers begin their search online, visually appealing listings are crucial. Virtual staging helps create attractive, eye-catching images that can stand out in online listings, attracting more potential buyers and generating more interest.
Faster Decision Making: By providing a furnished look, virtual staging helps potential buyers visualize themselves in the space, making it easier for them to make a decision. Empty spaces can be hard to judge in terms of scale and potential, but virtually staged photos help overcome this barrier.
Reduced Time on Market: Properties that are staged, even virtually, tend to sell faster than those that are not. By enhancing the property’s appeal, virtual staging can lead to quicker sales, reducing the time the property spends on the market.
Convenience: Virtual staging eliminates the need for physical labor and the logistics involved in traditional staging, such as moving furniture and setting up decor. This convenience saves time and effort for sellers and agents.
Highlighting Property Potential: Virtual staging can highlight the best features of a property and demonstrate the potential of underutilized spaces. It can also help downplay any flaws by drawing the eye to the attractively staged areas.
Adaptability to Market Trends: Virtual staging can be easily updated to reflect current trends in home decor and furniture, ensuring that the property appeals to the tastes of a contemporary audience.
Increased Engagement: Listings that feature virtually staged photos typically receive more views and engagement than those without. This increased visibility can lead to more inquiries and potentially faster offers.
Environmental Friendly: Since virtual staging does not require physical products or materials, it is an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional staging, reducing the need for manufacturing, transporting, and disposing of staging items.
In summary, virtual staging offers real estate agents and sellers a cost-effective, flexible, and impactful tool for enhancing the appeal of their listings. By making properties more attractive and helping potential buyers envision themselves in the space, virtual staging can lead to quicker sales and a higher return on investment.
Here is a sample of family room that was virtually stagged.
Enhancing Images with HDR Photography
High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography brings out the best in real estate photos by combining multiple exposures to create a single image with perfect lighting and detail. This technique ensures that your listings stand out with vibrant, eye-catching images that capture the beauty and uniqueness of each property.
What is HDR Photography and why is it important for Real Estate listings
Imagine taking a photo of a room with bright sunlight streaming through the windows and darker corners in the same scene. With a standard photo, you often have to choose whether the details outside the window are visible (making the interior look too dark) or the interior is well-lit (making the window view too bright and washed out). It’s like trying to balance sunglasses and a flashlight at the same time—you can’t have both perfectly.
Now, enter HDR, which stands for High Dynamic Range. HDR is like having a magic camera that can use the sunglasses for the bright parts and the flashlight for the dark parts, all in one shot. To create an HDR image,we startby taking several photos of the same scene at different exposures: one for the dark areas, one for the bright areas, and one or more in-between. Then, in post production we combine these images into a single photo that has detailed highlights, deep shadows, and vibrant colors throughout. We also adjust for color correction and remove unwanted color casts. It’s as if you’re seeing the scene with your own eyes, capturing both the sunny view outside the window and the cozy details of the room’s interior without losing detail.
For real estate photography, this means HDR images make properties look more inviting and true-to-life. They show off the beauty of both the interior and the landscape outside, making sure potential buyers see the home in the best light (literally!). It’s a way to ensure the photos are as attractive and engaging as possible, encouraging people to imagine themselves living in that space.
Contrary to some vendors that advertise lower package prices by only including standard range photography (SDR), all of our photos are HDR and with premium editing – included. So while standard range photography is cheaper and require less editing skills, the difference is in the details.
Imagine taking a picture with a regular camera or phone without any special settings. This is what we call Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) photography. It’s like trying to capture a scene with just one shot, using the average settings for light and dark areas.
In the context of real estate photography:
Lighting Limitations: SDR can struggle with scenes that have both very bright and very dark areas. If you’ve ever taken a photo inside a room with a window on a sunny day, you might have noticed either the room looks too dark or the window area is blown out (too bright and lacking details). It’s like the camera can’t decide whether to focus on the light or the shadows, so it compromises.
Detail Loss: In SDR photos, you might lose details in the shadows or highlights. For example, the intricate designs of a beautiful light fixture might not be visible, or the texture of the dark hardwood floor might get lost.
Realism: SDR images might not always convey the true ambiance of a space. They can feel a bit flat because they can’t fully capture the range of light and dark in a room as our eyes can see it.
So don’t devaluate your listing by using photography that doesn’t show your listing in the best light possible!
Embracing Vertical Real Estate Images
The shift towards mobile usage has also seen a rise in the preference for vertical images, particularly on social media platforms and mobile-oriented websites. Vertical photos cater to the way users interact with their devices, offering a more natural and engaging viewing experience that can enhance the visual presentation of your listings. Here’s a summary of the benefits of using vertical images for real estate marketing on social media, incorporating insights from various sources:
Optimized for Mobile Viewing: Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok are predominantly accessed via mobile devices where vertical images fill the screen more effectively, creating an immersive viewing experience. This is crucial as mobile usage continues to rise, making content that is optimized for these devices more engaging and accessible.
Higher Engagement Rates: Vertical images have been shown to engage users more effectively than horizontal ones on platforms built primarily for mobile use, such as Instagram. The larger display of vertical images on users’ screens grabs attention more readily, increasing the likelihood of likes, comments, and shares. This effect is partly due to the longer scroll time required for vertical images, which keeps the content in view for a longer period.
Support for Social Media Trends: The popularity of Stories, Reels, and TikTok videos—formats that favor vertical orientation—underscores the importance of adapting content to these trends. Real estate marketers utilizing vertical images can leverage these platforms’ features, such as music, captions, and links, to create dynamic and engaging posts that resonate with audiences. Our Real Estate Marketing Toolking has preset templates in vertical format, saving you time creating those trendy Reels and Stories.
Enhanced Storytelling: Vertical images allow real estate professionals to tell a story more effectively, showcasing properties in a way that highlights their best features. Whether through Instagram Stories or Reels, these images can offer a more detailed and engaging view of properties, from interior spaces to landscape shots.
Localization and Targeted Marketing: Social media platforms offer powerful tools for targeting specific audiences based on location, interests, and behavior. Vertical images, combined with these targeting capabilities, can help real estate professionals reach the right audience with visually appealing content that resonates with potential buyers or renters.
Diverse Content Creation: Vertical images provide flexibility in content creation, allowing real estate marketers to diversify their posts across different social media platforms. This variety can help maintain an active and engaging online presence, attracting a broader audience and generating more leads.
In conclusion, the shift towards vertical images in real estate marketing on social media is driven by the need for mobile optimization, higher engagement rates, and the ability to leverage current social media trends. By adopting vertical imagery, real estate professionals can enhance their online presence, connect with a wider audience, and ultimately, drive more interest in their listings. Be sure to mention during your order that you would like a certain amount of vertical images – particularly when you also order the Marketing Kit.
Conclusion
The trends in real estate photography for 2024 offer exciting opportunities for realtors to innovate, stand out, and attract more buyers. By embracing these trends, you can present your properties in the best possible light, offering immersive, engaging, and detailed views that captivate potential buyers. Whether through drone photography, virtual staging, or mobile optimization, the future of real estate marketing is bright, with photography at its core.