How Real Is a Real Estate Picture?

Concrete Dreams... You're in prison. Your wife takes a trip to Hawaii. She wants a picture of you and her together (on vacation!) for her office. Not a problem. She simply goes online to Point of View Photography or Friends Beyond The Wall and orders the picture of her dreams.

I'm not making this up. And if she has not traveled to an exotic location, don't worry. She can choose another real estate background, like City, Garden, Waterfall or, even, Sicily (if you're a Soprano).

It turns out that real estate pictures don't necessarily tell the whole truth. Well, you already know that. (I remember once asking a graphic artist to remove telephone wires from a picture used in a sales brochure.)

Remember the 1990's mantra? "The Internet changes everything." Hot dot-com services argued that images and, particularly, video would dramatically change commercial real estate marketing.

Firms like iPix and many others (no longer in business) touted 360-degrees shots and video tours as critical to an effective selling plan.

Of course, a funny thing happened on the way to the dot-com bank. While images and video do make the marketing process more efficient, they don't fundamentally alter it. They are NOT a substitute for a real tour.

So how do you use images most effectively? Tell me your stories. I'll report more in a future Dispatch.

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-- Peter Pike