Buying a house is, for most Americans, the biggest purchasing decision they will make in their lives. And the neighborhood where they will be living is just as important as the house itself. But many Americans are relocating to different cities when they buy a home and are often unfamiliar with local areas. To these home-buyers, learning about the community and selecting the right neighborhood is a critical step in the home buying process.
Yet real estate marketplaces, which are the primary source of information for home-buyers, lack detailed information on neighborhoods. Providing more neighborhood information, specifically through photography, can greatly improve the online home buying experience. Viewing neighborhood photos online can potentially save home-buyers from having to make a trip in person and will help home-buyers find properties that they are more serious in buying. Thus ultimately improving the overall performance of listings on a marketplace and helping sell more houses and sell faster.
Out-of-town home-buyers make up a large percentage of home searches
According to data from Redfin, a high percentage of home searches are from people searching outside their current metro. For high demand metros, such as Tampa FL, searches by out-of-town home-buyers can be as high as 56%. Home-buyers looking to move to a different city will be especially interested in neighborhood information and providing this is a great way for marketplaces to differentiate themselves and to capture business from out-of-town home-buyers.
The importance of neighborhood quality is increasing
According to research done by The National Association of Realtors, when buyers were asked which factors most determined where they bought their home, the quality of a neighborhood was ranked #1, even beating out other important factors such as convenience to a job and overall affordability.
63% of home-buyers replied that the neighborhood quality influenced where they bought a house, up from 58% in 2019. Clearly, the quality of a neighborhood is important to home-buyers, and providing better quality neighborhood information can attract more home-buyers to use a marketplace’s website and help sell more homes.
What people want to see in a neighborhood
When home-buyers visit a house in person they are not just looking at a property but are also interested in seeing local streets, parks, schools, shopping centers, and grocery stores. Home-buyers want to understand what it will be like to live day-to-day in that area and photography is the best way to provide that information on a website. Professional photography is proven to help sell more houses and will also help sell a neighborhood to prospective home-buyers.
Having local photos like these gives home-buyers a better understanding of what the neighborhood and community feels like and will create a more personal home buying experience.
Leverage local experience to get the best neighborhood photos
No one knows their neighborhood better than the people that live there. And that is why hiring local professional photographers is the best way to get neighborhood photos. Not only will local photographers know where all the important areas are, but they will also have the necessary photography skills to take photos that will really help a neighborhood shine.
And because local photographers live in the area, they can even take pictures all year round, providing an even deeper look into the lives of people living in a neighborhood. Photographers can document local events and traditions year round, creating neighborhood profiles that would work great on real estate marketplaces. These profiles can be re-used for any listing in that area and would be an invaluable asset for out-of-town home-buyers.
The best way to get local, neighborhood photos at scale is to use Snappr. With the largest network of local professional photographers, Snappr can deliver professional-quality photos anywhere, on-demand, and with as little as 2 hours advanced notice. And all Snappr photos are professionally edited, ensuring stunningly beautiful pictures for both neighborhood photography and real estate photos.
Contact Snappr’s Enterprise Team to learn why we’re the number one solution for real estate photography.
