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Do you want your home to look its best to potential Buyers?

Buying a home is usually an emotional experience. People make the decision to purchase a home based on their feelings. You want a Buyer to fall in love with a feature of your home as this will give you the best chance of getting the best price for your home.  The strengths of your home should be marketed and promoted so Buyers create an emotional tie with your home and gives them a reason why they want YOUR home.

Because of the impact of the Internet on real estate in recent years,  photographs are now a critical piece in the marketing of a home. Photos are used for the MLS and websites, plus every other marketing activity (brochure, magazine and newspaper ads).  Every study I've read that asks what Buyers want to see when they search for homes always has photos as #1.

Since a photo says a thousand words, you want those words to be positive. Don't risk having a potential Buyer discount your home as a possibility because of the quality of the photos! If you are selling an upper-end home, you NEED great photography.

Following are comparisons to show the dramatic difference between photos taken with consumer cameras vs. ones taken by Keith Byrd. Keith has over 12 years experience with digital photography. He uses state-of-the-art photography equipment worth over $3,000, including a wide angle lens worth $1,100 by itself.  Without a good wide angle lens, photos of rooms make them look small. Keith also performs post production of the photos with Photoshop to make sure the photos look the best. Keith takes hundreds of photos of a home to come up with the ones that are used to market a home. Keith was recently asked to take the photography of the home Steve Wozniak built (an Apple co-founder) in Los Gatos.

The first four photos below are of a million dollar home located in the Cypress Ridge Golf Community. The first set of photos
are of the living room that look out on the fairway. The photos at the left were the ones used on the MLS until Keith
was asked to retake the photography.

Photo taken by agent with a consumer camera		Keith Byrd's photo

Agent photo                                                                              Keith Byrd's photo

The next 6 photos are of a listing in the North County.
Agent's photo		Keith's photo
Agent's photo		Keith's photo
One of the biggest challenges with interior photographs is with the windows. If you pick up a real estate magazine, you'll see many examples of photos that look like a nuclear test was performed outside the window. To avoid this glare, Keith takes multiple pictures of the same shot using different exposures. He then uses a sophisticated software program that merge the photos together. The photos below (and above) were done using this technique.

The following photos show the difference a wide angle lens and some Photoshop editing can drastically change the
look of an exterior photo of a home. The first photo was taken with a consumer camera.

Full Screen Photography

According to research by Onestat.com, in June 2006 over 80% of computer monitor displays were
at least 1024 pixels wide. Unfortunately, MLS systems are still living in the dark ages in regards to
photo displays. For example, when an agent uploads a photo to the Central Coast MLS system, the
first thing that happens is that photo is reduced to 400 pixels wide.  It gets worse when the photos
are sent to Realtor.com as they reduce them even further to 300 pixels wide.

It's like having a big screen TV but only watching shows on a small portion of the available screen.

Keith Byrd turns this shortcoming into an opportunity for home sellers. Keith creates custom property
websites for listings and displays the photos full screen (up to 1600 pixels wide). By displaying
great looking photos on the entire computer screen, the potential Buyer is WOW'ed by the presentation.

Keith creates two custom property websites for a listing, one with the Listing Agent's contact info on it (branded)
and another without any contact info (unbranded). The unbranded site is for other Realtors to use as
a tool to help them sell the home. Most Realtors will not send materials to their Buyers that have another
Realtors contact information on it.

Examples of property websites with Full Screen Photo displays:

www.7725sundance.com (branded)

www.7725SundanceTrail.com (unbranded)

The creation and use of unbranded property websites on the Central Coast was started by Keith Byrd. He also requested that
an unbranded property web site address be allowed in the public comments of the MLS listing. In January 2007,
the MLS rules were modified to allow this in the following MLS Associations: San Luis Obispo, North Coast,
Pismo Coast, and Santa Maria. This allows Keith to get additional exposure for your home as this website address
will appear on other MLS Search results.