Well, like duh, YES! Photos of properties sell homes.

In today’s Realtor Magazine, I found the following article:

How Photos Help Sell Homes

Photographs that accompany home listings on the Web or in brochures, newspaper advertisements, flyers, magazine articles, and other marketing materials play a significant role in attracting buyers.

These images serve as the first impression, and buyers often decide whether or not to see a home in person based on their quality and presentation.

Research reveals that the more photos a listing has, the quicker it sells. A property with a single photo spent 70 days on the market (DOM) on average, while DOM fell to 40 with six photos, 36 with 16 to 19 photos, and 32 with 20 photos. Additionally, listings with one photo sold for 91.2 percent of the original price, while homes with six or more sold for 95 percent of the original price.

The photos to be used in an agent’s marketing materials should be taken by a professional, with experts noting that sellers will recoup the costs of professional photos if their homes sell faster and at a higher price.

While the statistics are for homes sold across the country, and not just in San Francisco, it’s sort of obvious that with 80% of home buyers starting their home search on the internet, listings with good photos sell faster and for more money than listings without good photos – or my pet peeve, with just one photo of the exterior of the building and that’s it. (Occasionally, that’s necessary, such as in the case of tenant occupied property or when it’s dangerous to walk inside of a building – but that’s about it.)

If you’re looking to sell your property, make sure your agent arranges to take great photos. In most cases, I will pay for a photographer to come out and take amazing photos – and every time, it’s incredibly worth it. Good photos will make a prospective buyer WANT to see your property. Bad photos will make them cross it off their list, period.

Go ahead, browse some properties online and test the theory.