Listing Agent Staging

Typical listing agents may ___?

• A — Not offer to stage at all,
• B — Encourage you to stage with your own things supplemented with some of the listing agent’s stuff,
• C — Hire budget stagers who may have no education/qualification,
• D — Offer to help you find and hire a stager,
• E — Some random, unpredictable mish-mash of “all of the above” or other stuff.

Correct Answer — E. A patchwork approach to staging can help, hurt, or do nothing for your sale. The only thing that can be known ahead of time is that the REALTORS® who take this approach do not understand the value of staging or care as much about your success as they do about pocketing a commission.

Pro Tip: RESA® and other retrospective studies have examined home sales to calculate the sweet spot for spending on staging. It was determined that spending 1-3% of the list price of the home resulted in the best ROI of 1001%. That means, when sellers spent 1-3% on staging, their homes sold for more than similar homes by the full amount they spent on staging + 10 more full amounts. Crazy but true.

“Luxury” Agent Staging

Similar to typical listing agents, “luxury” agents may not offer to stage at all, encourage you to stage with your own belongings, or hire a stager. “Luxury” agents can be caught cutting corners when they:

1. Fail to stage vacant properties,
2. Don’t/won’t hire a professional stager to help you stage with your own belongings because, “Your home is lovely as is.”

Remember, REALTORS® that are both trained and qualified to judge whether your home looks its best “as is” are rarer than unicorns. It takes more than experience as a REALTOR® to understand correct home staging. If it didn’t, they’d all certify as stagers. [Just look at any REALTOR® business card and count the credentials following the name. REALTORS® love chasing credentials.] Ask for proof of staging credentials if you hear your REALTOR® flattering your personal style as a reason that you don’t need a professional stager. It feels good to bask in flattery but you need to remember that what buyers offer for your property will not be based on your “incredible style.” More importantly, if you fail to engage the help of a qualified, professional home stager, zero evidence exists that the purchase offer(s) you recieve will be as numerous or as high as they could be if you had.

Again, the only thing that can be known for certain about “luxury” listing agents that cut corners on staging is that they don’t understand the material value of staging or care as much about you & your sale as they do about getting paid.

Pro Tip: RESA® and other retrospective studies have examined home sales to calculate the sweet spot for spending on staging. It was determined that spending 1-3% of the list price of the home resulted in the best ROI of 1001%. That means, when sellers spent 1-3% on staging, their homes sold for more than similar homes by the full amount they spent on staging + 10 more full amounts. Crazy but true.

Marketing Agent Staging

Every Marketing Agent’s preferred stager will provide on-site consultation no matter what the approach to staging your property will be. Only qualified home stagers can know how best to prepare your home for sale. They will do everything from mapping how your belongings should be arranged to fully furnishing & styling your vacant property for maximum impact.

Pro Tip: RESA® and other retrospective studies have examined home sales to calculate the sweet spot for spending on staging. It was determined that spending 1-3% of the list price of the home resulted in the best ROI of 1001%. That means, when sellers spent 1-3% on staging, their homes sold for more than similar homes by the full amount they spent on staging + 10 more full amounts. Crazy but true.

Auto-generated property websites…

… are created by mass-production services that some brokerages provide to all of their REALTORS. These automated services build websites containing only information and photos found in the MLS. Their primary purpose is to provide branding for the brokerage. Auto-generated websites add nothing new to potential buyers’ understanding of a property that they’ve not already seen on Zillow. In fact, Zillow sites look better, cleaner, and more modern.

Pro Tip: Even if an brokerage makes one of these automated websites, don’t waste buyers’ precious time by sharing these second rate websites.

Here are some screenshots of brokerage-provided, auto-generated websites. To see ‘live’ examples, click on an image and search for any property. It won’t be fun but it will show you how/why this type of website adds no value to your sale.

“Why should I care?“

Since MLSs are extremely limited in their capacity to host and publish most modern media, a dedicated property website is the best way to consolidate, organize and share the many visual, valuable, and informative assets that the best REALTORS® create to help buyers evaluate your property. A properly designed website functions as a hub for the many things that the MLS can’t and won’t share. Things that help interested buyers take a deep dive into and form a strong connection to your property. There is zero value in websites that simply repackage the same MLS stuff that is already presented better by Zillow, Trulia, etc.

Pay-to-play website services …

… are template-driven subscription or per-property website services. Paid websites services like these are better than auto-generated ones but have real limitations, too.

PROs

1. Their templates were originally designed by legit web designers who infused them with a higher, more modern design aesthetic.
2. The templates can hold more images and other forms of media than the MLS can.

CONs

1. Inflexible. Customization is often limited to turning sections on/off.
2. No marketing pros. There is no marketing staff to write a compelling description of your property.
3. Focus limited to making things pretty. Pretty is nice but it’s not a marketing strategy.

EXAMPLES. Since pay-to-play websites virtually disappear after a property is sold and are not easily searchable online, finding lasting, real world examples is essentially impossible. However, you can get an idea of what these sites look like and how they function by looking at the following real estate templates offered by affordable online website service providers:

Pro Tip: Remember that professional web designers chose the sample photos shown in the (above) templates and, unless your REALTOR® hires an editorial photographer, your website will not look as ‘high-end’ as these templates do. [More on photography in the PHOTOS section.] But, even with editorial photos, these pretty websites are still just pretty; they don’t typically provide buyers sufficient or additional information.

“Why should I care?“

Template-based, paid-service websites look nice but, crucially, they are targeted completely wrong. The above service providers’ examples are designed to attract REALTORS®, not homebuyers. This type of site is utterly ineffective at targeting and motivating homebuyers because there are no professional advertisers or marketers filling the template with content (photos, written copy, etc.). Remember, property websites are arguably the most complete source of information about your property that buyers can find, if done correctly.

Truly Custom Property Websites

For precisely the same reason that multimillion dollar corporations hire professional marketing companies to design their websites, I do the same for you. The marketing company I hire to create a website for your sale knows how homebuyers shop and how to cut through the “noise” of competing listings. They’ve designed my winning formula for property websites, however, each website is uniquely customized to the strengths & specifics of each individual property.

Imagine you are a homebuyer scrolling through endless listings on Zillow, then click any of these images to see how my property websites set my listings apart from and ahead of the crowd.

“Why should I care?“

When a marketing firm creates a detailed, customized property website containing homebuyer-focused elements that, in highly relevant and easily-digested ways, improve a homebuyer’s understanding of your property, it can (literally) elicit offers from buyers that have yet to see the home in-person. In my opinion, doing less virtually guarantees your property will not sell as quickly as possible while also commanding top dollar. A properly designed website, one that presents everything I will create to market your home, is vital in 2023.

Listing Agent writing:

Disclaimer: For educational purposes, the following texts were copied directly from real MLS listings. After reading them, you’ll likely find it hard to believe that all listing descriptions (regardless of the author), must be approved (in writing) by 1) the listing agent, 2) the home seller, and 3) the listing agent’s principal broker or broker-in-charge.

This is the way a listing agent described an $899K single family residence:

“Great lot on a Cul-De-Sac! Single-Level home! Great for Multi-Generational living! Tons of rooms for multiple cars! Outside entertainment area. Recently redone roof with PV system and backup battery system. No maintenance and Association fees!!! Selling in an ‘As Is’ condition.”

The huge number of exclamation marks (!!!!!!!!!) plus all of the wronGly-N-randoMly CapiTAlized WorDS reaLLy lets Us kNOw THat SomETHIng specIal IS beINg oFFerEd HEre, no? If you’re wondering how special … the “as is” should answer that for you. “As is” is real estate speak for, “We aren’t fixing any of the broken, ugly, stained, scratched, outdated, or dead crap you’ll find here. For nearly $1M, we’ll happily sell you all of the problems that we didn’t want to deal with. Lucky you. You’re welcome.”

Here’s the way another listing agent described an $860K condominium:

“SINGLE LEVEL, BRAND NEW KITCHEN CABINETS, QUARTZ COUNTERTOP AND STAINLESS APPLIANCES, SPACOUS HOME WITH NEW GRASS IN THE FRONT YARD FOR YOU TO ENJOY. NEWLY PAINTED INTERIOR WITH LARGE BACK YARD FOR YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS TO ENTERTAIN. THIS HOME FEATURES NO MAINTENANCE FEE AND LOW HOA FEES OF JUST $42/MO. AS YOU ENTER THE HOME, YOU’LL BE GREETED BY VAULTED CEILINGS TO PROVIDE MAXIMAL NATURE LISTING [sic]. MASTER BEDROOM COMES WITH A SPLIT AC AS WELL AS THE MAIN LIVING AREA! THE BATHROOMS ALSO COME WITH BRAND NEW CABINETS, QUARTZ COUNTERTOP AND TOILETS. YOU’LL LOVE THAT THE HOME HAS A 2-CAR GARAGE PLUS ENOUGH SPACE TO PARK 2 MORE VEHICLES IN THE DRIVEWAY AND PLENTY MORE ON THE STREET! COME AND SEE THIS GORGEOUS EWA BY GENTRY HOME IN SOUGHT AFTER TROVARE!”

I mean … if the screaming all caps doesn’t convince buyers that they want this spac(i)ous home with maximal nature listing, well, I just can’t imagine what will. You?

“Luxury” Agent writing:

Disclaimer: For educational purposes, the following texts were copied directly from real MLS listings. After reading them, you’ll likely find it hard to believe that all listing descriptions (regardless of the author), must be approved (in writing) by 1) the listing agent, 2) the home seller, and 3) the listing agent’s principal broker or broker-in-charge.

Almost every property priced between $5-25M, is described by “luxury” listing agents with such limited imagination that they all sound like the same house. Here’s a mashup of the opening sentence in each of the first 7 luxury listings on Zillow at the time of this writing:

“LARGEST BEACHFRONT PROPERTY for sale on Hawaii’s Most Exclusive Street. A truly one of a kind offering with three levels of elegance! Luxurious beach-front property listing on the famous Kahala Avenue stretching almost 1 acre with the esteemed Kahala Beach as your backyard. Nestled along Kahala’s majestic sandy shorelines on the island of O’ahu sits a villa d’elegance, a paragon of luxury & opulence with inspirations of coastal Italian-Mediterranean architecture. Honolulu’s crown jewel ocean view luxury estate. Enjoy the unobstructed, sweeping linear ocean and coastline views with personal sunsets every night. ‘Hale Awa’ is a stunning contemporary oceanfront Hawaii estate uniquely situated on a rare secluded cove with breathtaking panoramic ocean, coastal, and mountain views across Maunalua Bay to Diamond Head. Perfectly placed below the esteemed Waialae Iki hillside, this stunning 4 bedroom, 3.5 bathroom oasis is nothing short of breathtaking.”

In your whole life, have you ever read such a collection of overstated nonsense? 

Pro Tip: No one in 2023 is dumb enough to read that listing description and think, “Yes, that is pure objective truth and definitely not a salesperson trying to push ideas into my head or convince me that this home is worth more than it is!”

[SIDEBAR] If you’re looking for a $5M+ home in Honolulu that does NOT have a “breathtaking, sweeping, panoramic view” of the Pacific Ocean, its beaches, Diamond Head, Koko Head, or other magical landscapes — good luck finding it.

Ad Agency Copywriting:

Professional copywriters remain aware that the words they write don’t exist in a vacuum. They exist within the context of other data and media that matter as much as, if not more than, the words alone. The copywriter’s goal is to move the reader (in this case, the homebuyer) down an information highway to the resources that s/he will find most valuable.

Therefore, a professionally written, buyer-focused listing description on Zillow might read something like:

What “glossy” words can we write to describe this home that aren’t better shown to you on this property’s virtual tour website? There you’ll find infotaining videos, a Matterport® 3D model, facts about upgrades/updates, a detailed HD photo gallery of 232 images, and so much more. CLICK the “View virtual tour” link on this page -or- go now to the URL shown in the property photos.

Property Videos

When it comes to informing and motivating 2023 homebuyers video is king. It’s clear that video is what homebuyers want. It’s true that a properly produced video is the best visualization tool you can provide to homebuyers. Yet, video remains the most expense type of media to produce and many REALTORS® don’t/won’t budget for it at all. Of the REALTORS® who do, you could probably count on one hand those that budget enough for effective video.

Sometimes, when typical listing agents don’t budgeted for video, it’s because their brokerages provide a cheap service that creates slideshow videos. Though technically video, these slideshows are auto-generated from the listing photos. Slideshows had their hayday in the ’90s but are essentially unwatchable to today’s homebuyers. In fact, they annoy modern homebuyers because the photos used are the same ones the homebuyer has already seen in the listing. Photos are made to float around, timed to inoffensive (boring) elevator-type or ukulele music.

Here are a couple examples:

“Why should I care?“

Homebuyers are left with one irritated thought, “Well, that’s minutes of my life I’ll never get back.” 

Thankfully, these are becoming very uncommon, but, if your listing agent ever posts one of these to your property’s listing, ask the agent to take it down immediately. Then look for a modern REALTOR® with a different brokerage.

Beware the PTO “Luxury” Property Video

“Luxury” agents are the biggest group of offenders when it comes to annoying homebuyers with videos that are summed up in the following equation:

PRETTY » attractive; typically pleasing but unnecessary
+
THREADBARE » used so often that it is no longer effective, moving, or persuasive
+
BROMIDIC » slow and unoriginal but with pretensions of significance
=
Pretty Threadbaromidic (PTO)

PTO videos are inexpensive, formulaic and typically shot+edited in under a week by a cameraman who started as a real estate photographer. In the mid-2000s, REALTORS®, desperate for video, embraced PTO vidoes being pitched by photographers who’d rebranded themselves as videographers, or producers. The PTO videos these photographers create are the best evidence that they don’t understand the purpose of video. They certainly don’t know (or don’t care) that video can inform, motivate, and inspire by revealing the story of a home and its alluring details.

Many luxury home listings have pretty threadbaromidic (PTO) videos attached, especially if the “luxury” listing agent has been in business so long that s/he’s forgotten how (or doesn’t care) to remain relevant. So, imagine yourself as a luxury homebuyer who’s searching through dozens (even hundreds) of luxury listings, all with PTO videos. The first video you watch may impress you with how pretty it is. But watch 5, 8, or 13 of them. Can you keep the houses straight in your mind or do they all start to melt together? Did the video reveal to you or help you recall any new details about the house? Or, did it put you to sleep with generic, circling views of every room interruped by irrelevant drone shots of Hawaii? I suspect you’ll see why homebuyers opt not to watch these videos anymore.

“Why should I care?“

“I could have gotten all of that from the photos but in less time,” is the statement that agents hear from homebuyers who watch one or more PTO videos.

SELLER BEWARE. We’ve all heard the warning “buyer beware,” but this is a rare case where the warning is for sellers. Beware the “luxury” agent who promises to make one of these pretty videos, no matter the “reasons” they give. Why?

The agent is leveraging 1) your fondness for your home with 2) the promise of seeing a pretty video of it, all in the service of convincing you to hire him/her. Remember, video can be a powerful way to reveal your property to homebuyers, but, PTO videos don’t have any power anymore despite all the anecdotal declarations by “luxury” listing agents that, “They work!” Sure, they work on unsuspecting home sellers, but no. They don’t attract homebuyers and who are we trying to attract? Oh, right, homebuyers.

Marketing Videos

“The marketing for this place is incredible! You literally cannot get stuff this good in New York City.” 

~Thad Hayes, Architectural Digest “Top 100 Interior Architects,” speaking of my ad agency’s marketing.

True marketing videos can be understood with this equation:

Informative » providing useful, additional, or detailed information
+
Persuasive » possessing the power to induce action or belief
+
Targeted » directed and specific
=
Infosuasively Targeted

Since each video is customized to directly target the wants and needs of feasible homebuyers, the form that infosuasively targeted videos take varies widely. What is clear as you watch these examples is that they are all unique, modern, energized, motivating, highly informative and —perhaps most important— distinctly memorable.

Zillow 360º

Here’s a rhyme I keep in mind: Low 3D is no 3D. The most common example of low-end 3D is provided free to REALTORS® by Zillow. Since 2019, Zillow has tried to compete in the 3D space but their product is awful. Homebuyers universally reject it and Zillow has had to swallow its pride and permit their listings to contain real 3D models by the company they’d tried (and failed) to replace … the OG of real estate 3D … Matterport®. It remains to be seen if Zillow:

1. 1. Continues to offer their inferior “3D Home” tours or discontinues them. (I vote for the latter.)
   2. Provides REALTORS® the same preferred placement and promotion for Matterport® 3D models that they give to listings that contained Zillow “3D Home” tours.

Time will tell. But, while they are still available, here is a look at a Zillow “3D Home” tour:

“Why should I care?“

Despite the reality that homebuyers almost never look at these insanely distorted Zillow “3D” tours, Zillow gives better placement and promotion to listings that contain them. Since they are free and can be captured by anyone with a smart phone, this is the least that every listing agent should provide. I always do. I wouldn’t hire any agent who doesn’t.

360º Virtual Property Tours

Companies hoping to compete with Matterport® have created what I describe as “high-end Zillow-like 360º tours.”  The look is refined to create an experience that is nicer to view and more easily understood than Zillow’s. These 360º tours have not yet been well-adopted by listing agents, “luxury” or otherwise. 

Here are samples from some of the bigger companies:

“Why should I care?“

You shouldn’t. As long as you get either this or a Matterport® model, you can check “3D experience” off your list of 2023 essential home marketing tools.

Matterport® Virtual 3D

Virtual 3D tours of properties have a long way to go before anyone says that they look or feel “like being there.” However, Matterport® has been in the game the longest and its interface is most familiar to homebuyers.  

Matterport® models have become a very common substitute for video because they are less expensive and faster to produce. The only group of people who are not excited about this substitution are homebuyers. Buyers still prefer infosuasively targeted marketing videos to virtual 3D models, but they prefer having both even more. 

Therefore, I provide both. I even have the Matterport® tour converted into a video for buyers who don’t like the learning curve that comes with navigating through virtual 3D models. More is more, in this case, and anyone who considers him/herself a Marketing Agent should provide all of the best & modern ways for homebuyers to engage with your property.

Infotaining Video of Matterport® 3D Model

Click image to play.

Smartphone Photography

If you’ve looked at homes for sale and thought, “Did the agent take these pictures with their phone?” They did. If you found them disappointing, they are. When an agent posts images that make their listing look like an FSBO (for sale by owner), you really have to wonder, “How on Earth did the home seller choose this agent? Is this REALTOR® getting paid 5-6% of the price of the house for this crappy service? Will anyone really look at this house, let alone pay full price for it?” The truth is, no, no one will pay top dollar for a property that gives a bad first impression, even in hot markets. Luckily, photos aren’t the only thing that influence buyers’ decisions so, yes, someone will look past bad photos. Every home eventually sells, even homes without photos. 

Still, pictures play a huge role in home buying decisions so, thankfully, only a small percentage of REALTORS® go the smartphone photo route. It’s still the practice of some agents, so, you’ll want to be aware of it and avoid it.

In fairness, by my displaying smartphone photos in the Listing Agent column, you might rightly infer that I’m suggesting that typical listing agents commonly use smartphone photos. To be explicitly clear, they don’t, for the most part. I’m showing examples here because, when smartphone photos happen, they are the products of agents who offer the lowest level of service. It’s easy to spot this low-quality photography:

“Why should I care?“

The 2019 report of a study conducted by the National Association of REALTORS® evaluated which parts of a typical online listing homebuyers valued most. The winner: photographs.* The takeaway? Do not let a REALTOR® list your home with smartphone photos.

*Not considered in the study: videos, 3D models, and property websites.

Disclaimer: NAR research and reporting is known to be highly biased, so even though it seems intuitive that homebuyers value photos highest, the report should to be considered with a healthy dose of skepticism. For example, the first sentence of the same report reads, “In 2018, 44% of homebuyers looked for properties online first.” The much more reliable Statista reports that 93% of 2018 homebuyers started their home search online. That’s a huge discrepancy in numbers.

“Professional” Real Estate Photography

I would estimate that 99.9% of all luxury listings and 81% of non-luxury listings contain this type of photography, for better and worse. “Professional” real estate photos tend to be captured with DLSR cameras and are edited to be brighter, more colorful, and/or more dramatic. BUT (and it’s a big BUT), while iPhone photos may appear dull and low-res, most “professional” real estate photos should be required to carry the label: WARNING: everything in this image is wildly not to scale! The colors, textures, light, surfaces, and environment have been manipulated & distorted beyond all reason. Buyer: The actual home probably loosely resembles what you see here. If you’ve ever visited properties after first seeing them online and the moment you walked in the door you thought, “Hmm, it looked a lot bigger in the pictures,” you were right. Why?

Real estate is photographed almost exclusively by paid amateur photographers. [It’s the “paid” part that allows them to call themselves “professional” despite having little-to-no formal training or inherent talent.] With the early 2000s proliferation of cheap DSLR cameras, the world found itself awash in amateur photographers wanting to make money. They found a home doing low-paying gigs for REALTORS®. For reasons too numerous to cover here, real estate photographers have little incentive to modernize or elevate their photos. Adding insult to injury, most REALTORS® (myself excluded) resist paying verifiably pro photographers to produce images that are really accurate, trustworthy, and informative for property buyers. Sadly, this explains why public polls consistently show that homebuyers don’t trust and come to hate being reliant on real estate photos. It’s also why you won’t find true pro photographers discussing real estate photos in serious photography forums.

Look around Zillow and you will find that most listings in 2023, especially luxury home listings, are plastered in photos that look like they’ve been ripped out of a $2.99 gas station souvenir calendar. And, though the images are disturbingly unreliable for homebuyers trying to visualize properties, they genuinely would make a killer $2.99 calendar of fansions [fantasy+mansions]:

The marketing company I use to advertise my listings does not hire real estate photographers. They hire and train pro editorial photographers and photo editors that take both the care and the time required to create photos that represent the property accurately and address homebuyer’s needs extensively.

“Why should I care?“

Two understandings are vital for you and your agent. First, no one cares about your (or my) opinion about anything. The only opinion that matters is the buyer’s. And buyers have spoken. They want photos that depict homes accurately, not postcards, not artworks, not distortions of reality. There is right and wrong when it comes to listing photos that drive sales, not result in sales, drive sales.

Second, if you haven’t already, now is the time to adopt the understanding that you are selling; you are selling a property. You’re not selling Hawaii, tropical living, or your opinion of “breathtaking.” Literally, every buyer that is looking at your listing has already bought Hawaii; you need to drive their desire to buy your property. The photos that the REALTOR® you hire uses in your listing are the 1st things potential buyers will delve into. Angering buyers by setting false expectations (and eventually dashed hopes) with inaccurate photos is a recipe for a turning a win-win sale into a battle over every tiny thing. Battles lead to concessions and “concessions” is real estate speak for “less money for you and more headaches for everyone.”

Editorial Photography

Like the images you can see in industry leading journals and websites (ex. Condé Nast, Architectural Digest, Houzz, Apartment Therapy), editorial images are what resonate with homebuyers.

I believe you can see the value of high-end editorial photography and why I pay for it. The galleries created for my listings by the ad agency I use bring together the best of many photographic disciplines: art, architecture, interior design, portrait, product, nature, landscape, and photojournalism. Linked to the following images are some HD galleries for properties I’ve represented at various price points. To see the galleries, click the images.

“Why should I care?“

If you’ve gone through this entire ‘agent service level comparison’ and still wonder why you should care about the quality of the photos your agent provides to promote the sale of your property, I really cannot imagine how. I’ve failed you and I’m sorry. Let me put you in touch with my marketing guy and see if he can help.

Free Social

It’s been accurately observed that most REALTORS® will not adopt a technology until it is either 1) free, or 2) so common that it is no longer effective. Social media advertising has reached both milestones now and it is therefore becoming more and more common to see both Listing and “Luxury” Agents creating ads using the free templates provided by social media platforms, like this: 

“Why should I care?“

You’re paying a REALTOR® to publicize and promote the sale of your property. While there is certainly no harm in creating free social media ads that will be largely ignored, wouldn’t it be better to hire an agent that puts a bit more thought, time, and effort into your sale? I think so. And let’s be honest, so do you.

Paid Social

When property ads are going to be “boosted” online (i.e., if money will be spent to push it to potential homebuyers not already known to the listing REALTOR®), ads must catch the eye and hold the attention of viewers long enough to inform them what’s being sold. Using a basic, free template provided by a social media platform is a fine second choice but, for reasons that are probably obvious to you, something like the following is far more effective:

“Why should I care?“

In the hands of a modern Marketing Agent, you won’t have to care. A Marketing Agent will do the caring for you and initiate the steps necessary to promote your property’s sale to the broadest potential buyer audience.