In both 2010 and 2013, RedFin conducted studies on the impact of professional photos vs. amateur photos in real estate listings across all price points. Here are a couple of charts (used with permission because who doesn’t love a good chart, right?):

The above chart shows how much closer to list price professionally photographed homes sold compared to amateur photographed homes. While this looks like the price advantage is very low or non-existent for both the under $200k and over $1m price brackets, for every other price point the increase in price is significant (there are other advantages though, which we’ll get to in a minute). Even a home in the $200k to $299k range shows a $3400 increase in the sales price just by using professionally shot photographs. The next bracket up, $300k to $399k posts a $7000+ sales price increase. These are numbers your seller will surely find significant.

This chart shows how many days faster a professionally shot home sells over a house shot by an amateur – a week faster for <$200k, nearly two weeks faster for $200k-$299k, nearly three weeks faster for $300k-$399k. Professional photographs have a direct impact on how fast a home sells.

One of the benefits of professional photographs is that the DSLR cameras and lenses are designed to capture more light and sharper details. For houses priced between $300k and $1m, professionally photographed homes are 44% more likely to sell at or above list price than houses which are not shot by professionals.

My guess (and since you are a realtor, please let me know if I’m wrong) is that the numbers are close to a wash or even a loss for the realtor. We’ll use a $250k house as an example.

Going with the figures on the first chart, let’s assume that professional pictures increase the sale price by $3400. Hurray for the buyers! They pocket a few extra thousand dollars to spruce up their new place, pay for their kid’s braces, or go on vacation. But what does the realtor get? Let’s say the listing agent charges 6% and gives the buyer’s agent 2.5% upon close. That leaves 3.5% for the listing agent. So, how much of the $3400 price increase does the listing agent get?

And how much does real estate photography usually cost? Anywhere between $100 and $200 just for pictures plus another couple hundred bucks for video. (We’re fast, easy to work with, and really good at our job, so our base price is $175 for pictures and $375 for a photo/video package).

From the realtor standpoint, real estate photography in this price bracket represents a negative ROI. From the seller’s standpoint, however, real estate photography even in this price bracket gives a return of ten to twenty times the investment, and the seller’s ROI jumps tremendously from there in the next two sales price brackets.

Realtor ROI: ($119 – $175)/$175= -32% return on the $175 investment (the $$ amount is only $56 though)

Seller ROI:  ($3400 – $175)/$175 = +1843% return on the $175 investment (the $$ amount increase is $3225!)

That’s stunningly beneficial for the seller while representing a comparatively minor expense for the realtor!  Noticing this trend, Redfin now offers free, professional real estate photography as a standard component of every listing and seller package. Because of the clear and tremendous benefit professional real estate photography provides to the seller, we expect this trend to become the industry standard over the next few years.