The real estate industry moves at a rapid pace and is highly competitive, placing a significant emphasis on visual appeal. When homeowners decide to put their properties on the market, their to-do list typically includes staging, decluttering, marketing, and organizing an open house. 

However, many sellers mistakenly believe these steps alone are sufficient for a quick sale. Not true! High-quality photo editing plays a crucial role in your success as a seller in today’s real estate market. 

In this post, we’ll share 17+ surprising insights into professional real estate photo editing that you need to know if you want to step up your game.

Let’s dive in!

17+ Surprising Insights Into Real Estate Photo Editing

To capture the attention of potential buyers, real estate photographers, agents, and sellers have to ensure top-notch quality and eye-catching listing visuals. 

This requires an extra touch of editing and retouching by a professional real estate photo editing service like PhotoUp

Let’s share some surprising insights to illustrate the importance of captivating real estate photos, starting with the user behavior of home searchers in 2024.

All Homebuyers Use the Internet to Find Their New Home 

All Homebuyers Use the Internet to Find Their New Home 

According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR) report, 100% of homebuyers now use the internet to find a house. And Google searches about the process of buying a home soared incredibly 950% last year.

In 2023, 52% of recent buyers found the home they ultimately purchased through the internet, per the report. That share was 37% in 2010.

High-Quality Real Estate Photos Accelerate Home Prices & Sales

Additionally, 83% of buyers said pictures are very important in helping them choose which homes they will visit. 

It’s no wonder why photos play such a crucial role in real estate. They provide homebuyers with a visual representation of the property, aiding them in determining whether it aligns with their budget and lifestyle. 

The visual appeal of a property in photos can help buyers assess if the asking price is reasonable or overpriced compared to similar homes on the market, which the next statistics touch upon.

Something sellers should consider is that homes with high-quality real estate photography achieve a 47% higher offer per square foot. 

In other words, sellers can almost double the sales price by using professionally edited real estate photos when listing their properties. Despite this, half of over $1 million properties use poor-quality photographs. Don’t be one of them!

Homes Featuring High-Quality Photos Sell Faster & Get More Views 

Approximately 32% of homes featuring high-quality photographs (hence, post-processing is necessary to create top-notch quality images) sell faster compared to those that lack real estate photography. 

On average, homes with only one photo remain on the market for about 70 days. In contrast, real estate listings boasting at least 20 high-quality images in their descriptions typically sell within a month.

According to an article published in the Wall Street Journal, a captivating real estate photo can hold a viewer’s attention for up to 20 seconds. However, without proper photo retouching, this attention span can decrease by two seconds. 

This is why houses with professional images get 61% more views and sell faster even with only a few days on the market.

No matter how talented you are in shooting properties, there are always going to be factors like weather, poor lighting conditions, and cluttered spaces you have to clean up in post-processing. 

This data highlights the importance of high-quality photos in the real estate market. The better the quality of your photos, the more likely you are to attract and maintain the interest of potential buyers.

Have You Ever Thought To

Outsource Photo Editing?

Try it today with 10 free edits from three professional photo editors.

Real Estate Photography Boosts Showings & Online Listing Views

According to IMOTO, 88% of Realtors agree that real estate photography significantly boosts both showings and online listing views. 72.18% of Realtors also believe that professional photography helps them win more listings.

Also, the majority of real estate professionals believe that incorporating virtual staging, aerial photography, and walk-through videos can greatly enhance the appeal of a listing, increasing the likelihood of securing more real estate and luxury property clients.

Furthermore, 68.9% of agents believe professional real estate photography helps them brand their business.

Leveraging professional photography goes beyond merely enhancing your property listings – it plays a crucial role in establishing a more refined and professional brand for your real estate business. 

As a Realtor or agent, utilizing high-quality images can significantly bolster your brand’s credibility. Remember to showcase these professional photographs on your website and social media platforms to fully capitalize on this advantage.

Besides, this offers a huge competitive advantage since only 35% of agents employ professional photographers. You can stand out from the crowd by outsourcing your editing needs to a professional real estate photo editing service.

Professionally Edited Real Estate Photos Increases Sales Prices

High-quality real estate photography does more than just boost online views and accelerate sales; it also significantly impacts the final selling price. 

Professional images can help convert price inquiries into high-value sales, with listings featuring top-notch photography selling 39% closer to their original asking price.

In fact, high-quality real estate photography can significantly boost the value of homes, leading to offers up to 47% higher per square foot. This means that properties listed between $200,000 and $1 million can sell for an additional $3,000 to $11,000 when showcased with professional real estate images.

Advanced Real Estate Visuals Attract More Attention From Homebuyers 

Advanced real estate visuals have been shown to attract more attention from homebuyers.

For example, homes with drone photos or aerial photos sell 68% faster. Also, using a professionally edited twilight image as the listing’s main photo averaged 76% more views than listings without the use of twilight images.

Additionally, 99% of sellers say a 3D tour would give their listing a competitive edge. In fact, properties featured in a 3D tour spend around 31% less time before getting a buyer. Lastly, listings with videos get 403% more views than those without videos.

Despite the significant advantages of professionally edited real estate photos, only 15% of online property listings feature these high-quality images. 

This statistic highlights that over half of sellers are still relying on subpar photos or forgoing visual content altogether in their listings.

The importance of using high-quality, professionally edited real estate photos cannot be overstated.

Whether you’re new to the real estate industry or a seasoned professional, including top-notch photos in your listings can significantly boost your career and make your properties stand out.

So why wait? Give PhotoUp a try! Let’s give you a brief introduction to PhotoUp’s real estate photo editing service.

Have You Ever Thought To

Outsource Photo Editing?

Try it today with 10 free edits from three professional photo editors.

Outsource Your Real Estate Photo Editing to PhotoUp

With PhotoUp, you gain an expert partner eager to assist you in producing high-quality, natural-looking real estate photos that are sure to captivate buyers and assist in selling properties faster.

Based in the US and with additional offices in the Philippines, we offer a full range of services to cater to all your photo editing needs, including:

  • Brightness and color correction
  • Vertical lines adjustments
  • Advanced object removal
  • Day-to-dusk conversion and Twilight editing
  • Lawn greening and sky replacements
  • HDR editing
  • Manual blending
  • Flambient editing
  • And much more!

PhotoUp’s team of editors can handle any editing job — big or small, complex, or simple. 

Plus, our pricing is affordable, with most photo editing services starting at only $1.10 per image depending on your subscription. 

Dedicated Photo Editing

We also offer dedicated photo editing services. A dedicated editor learns your style and approach and provides consistency while improving turnaround times. 

You’ll also be surprised at how dedicated photo editing can save you money. 

Consider this –  on average, a dedicated editor outputs 1,800+ edits per month, at a final cost of $0.72 per edit. We have even seen $0.50 per edit. 

Working with a dedicated photo editor is not only affordable, but it will save you countless hours while also boosting your image quality!

PhotoUp Dedicated Editing

For more details, you can check out our short dedicated editing demo video:

It’s really that easy to get started with a dedicated editor!

A Complete Real Estate Marketing Service

PhotoUp Real Estate Photographer Websites
PhotoUp Real Estate Photographer Websites

On top of that, PhotoUp does much more than just real estate photo editing. We are a complete real estate marketing service and also offer powerful marketing tools such as:

We have everything you need to enhance and market real estate photography in one user-friendly software!

So, take the next step, and take your real estate photography to the next level.

Sign up for a free PhotoUp account today, and give PhotoUp’s professional real estate photo editing service a try!

For a limited time, we even offer 10 free credits when signing up for an account you can use on any of our services.

We hope this blog post provided valuable insights into real estate photo editing’s importance in creating stunning images that sell listings faster at higher rates. If you found this blog post useful, you may also want to check out some related resources:

Stina Pettersson

Professional Blogger

Stina is an entrepreneur, digital marketer, and professional blogger who's passionate about real estate photo editing, being outdoors with her pup, and sweaty gym sessions. She loves the written word and has been writing for publications like Forbes and Thrive Global. Originally from Sweden, she's called South Florida her home since 2013.

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