'Internet Curb Appeal' - The New Concern!
by Mario Restrepo
AMPI is the most prominent organization of real estate agents in Rosarito, Baja California. AMPI is an affiliate of the National Association of Realtors, NAR. NAR now recognizes that over 80% of all completed real estate transactions started with the home being viewed on the internet first! Buyers of Baja real estate are perfect examples of this concept as they search online first, then they come down to look at what they saw online.
Thus the importance of ‘internet curb appeal’ is born!
A home for sale must be visually pleasing on the web or it will be overlooked, especially since there are so many homes for sale here in Baja. Our Baja inventory is growing and growing. So now more then ever, internet curb appeal is extremely important if you want results in any selling efforts.
Internet curb appeal comprises of two important aspects, and one can’t live without the other. If you eliminate either of them your home for sale may get ‘stale’ and become dead in a tough selling market.
Firstly, get professionally shot virtual tours because buyers know that pictures leave out a lot of information. People who look at pictures of homes know that they are not seeing the complete picture, while a 360° virtual tour takes away that uncertainty.
A complete 360° virtual tour gives a buyer greater certainty that they will not be wasting their time if they were to visit the home in person. According to the National Association of Realtors, 85% of all buyers did use virtual tours before they looked at a property, if a 360°virtual tour was available. Only 15% of all home buyers failed to use virtual tours before they looked at a property for sale. And it is known that a buyer's failure to view virtual tours could have been for a variety of reasons, such as the buyer having a super slow bogged down computer, computer virus, or a lack of computer skills.
The next important step to ‘internet curb appeal’ is professionally shot real estate photos. If your house doesn’t look good in pictures, why do you think a potential buyer will think it will look good live, in person?
Even more drastic is that if you don't have one excellent, highly impactful initial real estate photo on the listing page, then there is a strong chance that your listing will just get overlooked! Period. It is just like a newspaper article in that if the title is not compelling and capturing, you won't read it...you'll go to the next page!
Real estate picture taking is a tricky task, as there are lighting issues in rooms and extreme lighting issues through windows. Only a technically experienced real estate photographer can portray a property the way it should.
The botton line is if a property looks bad online, it will be overlooked. This is possible even if the property description matches the buyers property search criteria!
Here in Baja, professional real estate photography is an unheard of concept. Maybe this is because professional real estate photography costs time and money, or maybe because many agents and brokers are not willing to experiment with improving their marketing plans. But don’t let the lack of usage distract you from not having your property for sale professional shot, especially in a slow market.
You will easily get your Baja property for sale viewed more often by different buyers, and reviewed more often by the same buyer, and recommended more often by area agents if you have good ‘internet curb appeal,’ especially since most Baja real estate for sale has tons of horrible real estate pictures on the web.
If you were to Google search: ‘bad real estate photography,’ you would get to websites with tons of good homes that look horrible on the web. For that reason alone, some markets have a hard time increasing home values. How can a community possibly show pride of home ownership with horrible pictures!
Make sure your Baja home for sale does not fall in that category. Request to your agent that your home for sale or rent receives professional real estate photography and virtual tours. |