Picture This: The Real Estate Photo Fix You’ve Been Waiting For
Real estate agents need to focus on closing deals. That means they need less distraction.
Automation is one way to make this happen. But for automation to be worthwhile, real estate agents can’t sacrifice their quality of work.
The final “product”—like the connection of a family with a home, or the pairing of a company with an office—is a complex combination of economic preferences with features to satisfy them.
What could possibly convey that a piece of real estate is an excellent choice for a particular buyer better than a true-to-life photo gallery? Being there in person of course. But in most cases great photos will lead the buyer to the location.
According to a 2024 National Association of Realtors study, the “most valuable content on websites were photos.”
If real estate agents and brokerages are to perform in this challenging market, they need high-performing tools. Due to advances in visual content technology, they can now spend less time getting great photos.
The Current Real Estate Photo Market is a Burden on Agents and Brokerages
Real estate agents need a significant number of photos compared to other professions. This is a very visual business.
Agents need three types of photos:
- For listings
- Of event activities
- Of themselves, like headshots
These photos need to be:
- Quality
- Affordable, and
- Not have taken too much time to get
Getting a quality and affordable photo requires:
- Finding a qualified photographer
- The price being right
- Coordinating the shoot
- The photographer showing up, doing the work, and having the right materials and access
- Transmission of the photos
- Editing and approvals
This process takes time. It often takes too much time.
To the extent a brokerage is trying to handle some parts of the photo-making process so its agents don’t have to, current market inefficiencies are a problem for both the brokerage and agent members.
Lost time is the obvious cost.
There are three hidden ones.
The Three Hidden Costs of the Current Real Estate Photo Market
Real estate agents:
- Have to spend less time on closing deals
- Cannot market themselves, their listing, or their events as effectively when they have fewer photos
- Have to settle for lower quality photos
Let’s dig in.
The opportunity cost of lost time for real estate agents
First, there’s the exact opportunity cost that results from lost time: Real estate agents spend less time focusing on closing deals. Specifically:
- Agents have less time to talk and visit with people, primarily buyers, sellers, and their representatives
- Agents have less time to think about the things that matter for closing deals
This means the current photo market has reduced, to some extent, the total amount of closed real estate deals.
Potential buyers are less informed
Strapped for time, agents often have to forego getting as many photos as would be ideal. This is the second burden the current market imposes on agents. Specifically, agents have:
- Less coverage of events, limiting social media opportunities
- Fewer and less recent photos of locations, failing to supply buyers with a lifelike 360 view
- Fewer personal photos, like a less recent headshot
Reduction in photo quality
The third cost imposed on agents is a reduction in (a) the quality of some photos and (b) brand consistency across photos.
- Agents sometimes have to settle on photo quality just to move the ball forward.
- Agents don’t have the time to make sure all photos cohere as tightly as they could with the brand of the agent or the brokerage.
These are serious problems.
The good news is that they are solvable.
Don’t Compromise Photo Quality: Help Agents Attract Buyers
A listing is ideal when it shows off the location. A listing shows off a location primarily when it has true-to-life photos.
Only professional photographers can accurately capture the qualities of a piece of real estate.
Airbnb was one of the first real estate empires to realize it should get professional photography at scale. Four Carnegie Mellon professors studied the effect of high quality photographs on Airbnb bookings in 2016 and found that a host using professional photography would earn thousands more a year.
Airbnb continues its practice to the present day, supporting the professors’ analysis.
Renters Warehouse, which helps homeowners find long-term renters, came to the same realization as Airbnb. It wanted an end-to-end solution, including professional photography, to provide photos for its clients. This had to be done at scale without sacrificing quality. Once they found the right solution, they saw a 3.5x increase in home visits.
There’s a reason why Airbnb and Renters Warehouse use the same service. Look at a sample photo:
The image has no pixelation or surface softness. Lighting is soft, combining natural and artificial light.
The camera is positioned correctly. It has correct verticals without tilting and is angled toward the bed. The whole bedroom is captured, even the hallway.
The view is full but not cluttered. The depth of the room is explored and the textures of the linens, upholstery, and rug fibers stand out.
Quality and affordable photos like this one can be acquired:
- For any location
- For any number of locations
- With virtual staging
- In a 24-48 hour timeframe
- Working with only one tool
- For significantly less workflow time
The same benefits have drawn 48% of the A16Z Top 100 Marketplace and 73% of the Fortune 500 to the same one-stop-shop technology under discussion: Snappr Workflows.
Snappr Workflows for Real Estate Brokerages
High-performing brokerages in 2025 know that agent enablement is essential. Photos are one critical piece of the puzzle.
Two problems stand out:
- Agents spend far too much time making photo shoots happen.
- There is too much brand and creative inconsistency in the quality of photos.
These are precisely the kinds of problems that a brokerage can help solve for its agents.
It’s already been done. It’s being done.
How a national brokerage uses Snappr
Consider a national real estate innovator which combines salaried agents and proprietary tech to reshape how homes are sold. They are no stranger to problems of scale; they onboard around 1,000 new agents a year.
They tried an in-house approach to providing headshots.
- They had to vet photographers and pay for salaries, equipment, and travel.
- The back-and-forth between creative and the photographers led to bottlenecks.
Snappr stepped in. In turn:
- Employee time was saved.
- The brokerage spent less money.
- Agents rejected 20-30% fewer headshots.
- Satisfying headshots were published sooner.
Saving time on photography coordination
For single or multi-property shoots, including virtual staging, Snappr:
- Manages bookings, rebookings, and any scheduling issues
- Communication between the brokerage and the photographer
This leads to fast outcomes.
- Photoshoots and changes to them are possible with 24-hour notice.
- Total turnaround time is 24-48 hours, including post-production efforts.
Photographer network
Snappr vets its photographers. Specialists in real estate will be located for brokerages. They go on site and bring their own equipment.
Coverage includes 90% of the English-speaking population in the world.
Getting consistency across photos
Snappr collaborates with customers to ensure that photographers receive clear, specific brand and creative guidelines.
Once put into Snappr, brand and creative specs are automatically assigned to all relevant–present and future–workflows so everyone is on the same page.
Post-production editing and customer support
Snappr does its own quality control after every photo shoot.
Brokerages can also edit photos.
Snappr’s editing function is powered by its own AI. Look at the difference it can make even with a great base photo:
Sources of natural light from the windows and artificial light from the kitchen are enhanced without sacrificing realism.
Lighting now shows off the chair, couch, and table much better. The living room as a place to sit and relax or party is more evident.
Batch editing, including smart filters, is available.
Workflows are customizable and efficient
Brokerages can build their own workflows in an intuitive, no-code way.
- Trigger events, like a photographer’s completion of a job
- Source assets, like fresh stills
- Set actions, like editing a cluster of images or assign the task to a team member
- Select a Snappr tool or a third-party app for the task
- Set approvals and publication conditions
The purpose of Snappr Workflows dashboard is convenience.
- Snappr integrates with every value-add tool, like Zapier, Photoshop, Amazon S3, and more.
- View all content assets, photoshoots, and account information in one dashboard.
Pay only for what is necessary
Enterprise pricing is specific to the customer. It is based on actual usage.
Effective per-photo pricing ends up being cheaper than working with a traditional studio, and far cheaper than working with a marketing agency.
Paid-for photos come with perpetual licenses.
Brokerages Can Use One Vendor to Get All the Photos They Need
Brokerages compete with each other in part through agent enablement.
Real estate agents need plenty of high quality photos. Brokerages need these photos to cohere with the brand.
Freedom from hassle, fast production, and quality control are essential ingredients.
Snappr Workflows is a proven way to meet these needs.
Start a conversation with the Snappr team.
