Non-Professional Photography Waiver
Photos are your storefront – they’re the first impression that a potential tenant has about your property. It doesn’t matter how nice the place is, if nobody wants to come and see it. As such, they are by far the most important thing to get right in a property advertisement.
We always recommend professional pictures to our clients. Real estate photography is a very specific skill that needs specialist equipment – you simply cannot get the same quality results on your phone camera. Yes, there is a cost involved, which is usually around $200-$250 depending on the size of the property and where it is located. But you can use those photos for years to come.
Using poor-quality or amateur photos will have a huge effect on how fast your property rents, the quality of the tenants, and how much you earn from it:
- Fewer people come to view properties they see as less attractive on Trademe.
- Fewer viewers results in fewer applicants.
- Lower rent – when we’re assessing the rent we have to look at your competition. If other similarly sized and located properties on Trademe are better presented, we need to take that into account. It doesn’t help you to price the property too high and lose you several weeks of rent, while people go to see the better presented option.
- Lower quality tenants – poorly presented properties attract a lower standard of applicant – particularly those who have been unsuccessful in applying for more popular properties.
- Longer time to rent – we have to be careful about who we rent to – the financial damage that can be caused by a bad tenant is just not worth the risk. Quite simply, if we don’t have good applicants for your property, it will remain empty for longer. You could lose thousands in rent, just to save a couple of hundred on photos.
We often find that clients have access to professional photographs that they have forgotten about. For example:
- Did you recently buy the house? Can you get the pictures from the selling agent?
- Has the property been managed by another company previously? If they charged you for photos then they’re your photos.
If we’ve advised you that the pictures you’ve provided are of insufficient quality, we’ve done so because of all those risks. If you still want us to use the photos you have provided, we’ll do what you’re asking, but we need a waiver from you to confirm:
- that we’ve advised you of the risks above
- that you want us to proceed with the photographs that you have provided anyway
- that if you subsequently change your mind and want us to change the photographs, we will need to start the listing from scratch and you will pay another full letting fee.