What Were They Thinking?

Yes, a cat, a stripper pole and two double beds. Make of it what you will. Without the cat it's just a seedy condo in the red-light district. The cat is what makes it a home.

What Were They Thinking? Drive-By Shooting Edition

When I was a newspaper reporter the photographers used to refer to them as "drive-by shootings". They were the photo assignments that one cared so little about that one did not even get out of the car to snap the image.

Call me crazy, but if you are a real estate broker the very least you can do for your client is get out of the car when you take the exterior photo of the building. That goes double if the extterior photo is the only one you're going to post with the listing. Pffft!

What Were They Thinking?

Did not know the Grim Reaper was such a fan of knotty pine.

"What Were They Thinking? "Another in a Continuing Series of Real Estate Photos

At first glance you might think it is a crime scene in the style of "Who Killed Dora Palmer"?  Or maybe Dora's just a blackout drunk. You'd have to be a pretty hardcore fan of public television's intrepid Explorer to want to Vamanos! to this house.

H/T Jane S

What Were They Thinking, Sooooey! Edition

This property is a work in progress. The photos show no ceilings, roughed in plywood and drywall in most rooms. The bathroom, however, is quite something.

What Were They Thinking?

. and sometimes I'm convinced my fellow agents are just being whimsical. This photo for a very nice Plateau cottage, was labelled on the listing as "kitchen".

What Were They Thinking?

No but seriously. I have a condo for sale and was taking a look at what else is available for sale in the building. This is what I found.

To be fair, bathrooms are notoriously hard to photograph. The smallest room in the house does not lend itself easily to the horizontal photo layout requirements of the GMREB. But still...

Seriously. Could one take a worse, more thoughtless and careless photo of a loo?

What Were They Thinking?

No, that's not dog pee in the carpet. It's a feature.

Hail Blogger Well Met!

Someone on Tumblr loves bad real estate photography almost as much as me.
 

What Were They Thinking?

"If you buy this property, you can put carpets here and here. Also, you can make random heaps of stuff like this and maybe line up a few chairs and a sofa."

What Were They Thinking?

Master bedroom of a $500,000 duplex currently for sale in Montreal. Wanna smoke crack?

What Were THey Thinking?

There's air conditioning.

What Were They Thinking?

I've been saving them up, folks!  Sometimes the details are a little fuzzy, but this is ridiculous.

What Were They Thinking?

I have automatic listing searches set up for several buyer clients. I get an email alert every time a new listing hits the market. As always,  I clicked on the link for this new listing with a little flutter of excitement. Then I saw the photos.
Good God, where to begin? The toilet seat is up. There's piddle in the potty. The picture is time stamped September 28, 2010. How many ways can one agent devise for their photos to not help sell a property?

For $500,000 someone should at least have flushed the toilet.

What Were They Thinking?

 Today is March 30. It has been 96 days since Old Saint Nick shimmied down the chimeny of this Villeray condo.  What does it tell you that the listing photo of the living room still has a Christmas tree?
A) Christmas lives in our hearts always?
B)  Don't complain. There's something much, much worse hidden behind it.
C) The agent wants buyers to know exactly how long the property has been on the market.

It's beginning to still look a lot like Christmas!

What Were They Thinking? #13 in a Series.

Needlepoint nudes, really? This listing photo for a condo in trendy Plateau Mont-Royal is making the rounds on Facebook this weekend.
My favorite comment came from the guy who said "That room looks like it would smell of chlamydia and yoghurt."
Others were equally disturbed by the wooden duck on the air conditioner, the spotlights and the fake brick wall.
Handy rule of thumb. If you're thinking of selling your house, hide that boudoir art away.

When a Picture is Worth 1,000 Words. 'Yikes!' Being One of Them.

What it looks like when Satan gets into cocooning.

 Here at MontReal Estate central we like to goof around, particularly when we come across really dubious photos attached to real estate listings. You can check out some favorites by searching the key word "What?" in the topics to the right of this post.

Now that many real estate brokers are using smartphones equipped with quite good cameras it is easier than ever to get half decent photos. The new iPhone camera is basically idiot proof, with a high-definition setting that lets you sharpen the focus of any photo, not to mention correct the colour or add effects after the fact. I'm pretty sure that's what went wrong with the photo to the left. The room can't possibly be that red, unless Satan doth dwell there, right?

You have permission to pee in the bath tub.

As these photos plucked from recent MLS listings illustrate, if a good picture can help sell a house, a bad one can really keep people away.

It is a serious enough problem that the Greater Montreal Real Estate Board sends out a steady stream of press releases, tip sheets and video features offering brokers ideas on how to improve the quality of their photos, because bad photos are a disservice to clients.

Recently the board mandated a private company to examine the photos on the MLS for quality-control purposes. (My dues at work!)  The result, 20 per cent of photos on the MLS are blurry, poorly framed or most likely, too dark. They didn't get into the fact that sometimes the pictures are INSANE, (see above) but I digress.

Crisp lines and even light. A total absence of  clutter doesn't hurt.

 I recently had a buyer client who kept sending me links to listings to give me an idea of what he liked. After a while it dawned on me that what he really liked was listings with high-definition photos with their bright, even colours and crisp lines. See how sharp this one is?  Doesn't it make the condo pop? Exactly.

Sometimes when I'm in a hurry I grab my pictures for listing purposes. Mostly, however, I rely on a professional photographer to do the job right. Sharon Wilson takes great pictures. That's her work just beneath. Notice how she frames the shot to show the flow of one room into another.  She gets the right angles, the right lighting and the right framing. Plus, she's reliable, good-humored and delivers her pix on time. For me, it is among the smartest money I spend to promote a property.

A Sharon Wilson photo. Nice!

I dunno if Sharon has every knowingly taken a picture of a portable toilet in a bath tub. I know that she always puts the seat and lid down if she's photographing a real toilet. Now that's attention to detail.

What Were They Thinking? #12 in a Series.

Imagine a condominium so horrible that the houseplants have slowly edged their scraggly way out the door to live on the dimly lit, unheated landing.
There were exactly four photos with this listing. Two exteriors, one of which makes it look like a Quebec prison in need of foundation work, and two photos of the houseplants on the landing.
There are no interior pictures. None. How bad can the inside of the apartment possibly be?
You will be surprised to learn that the condo has been on the market since mid May, 2011. That's right, about 100 days. That's an eternity in downtown real estate and more than enough time for the listing agents to get better photographs.
I wouldn't be so critical if I didn't pay a professional photographer good money to take beautiful photos of all my listings.

What Were They Thinking? #11 in a Series

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The listing calls this a solarium. Three litter boxes says cathouse to me.

What WereThey Thinking? #10 in a Series

This was mixed in among the photos of a loft recently sold on Hutchison St. near Jean-Talon.  I'm not sure whether the beagle's eyes are saying "Get out of my house." or "Take me with you."

I like to think the listing agent was being whimsical.

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