It’s time for another installment of Real Actual Listing Photos. Once a month (or so) I round up some of the most bizarre listing photos from around the Seattle area and post them here, with brief excerpts from the real actual listing description, and probably a bit of snarky commentary.
The idea for this series stems from the ongoing forum thread Detrimental Listing Photos, which is where you should post your nominations for next month’s Real Actual Listing Photos post.
No specific theme this month, just a collection of crazy listing photos I’ve seen in the last month.
Enough explanation. Let’s get to the photos! Click the photo to view the Real Actual Listing.
“Exquisite 5.97 Acres overlooking Puget Sound, Vashon Island & Cascade mtns!”
Previously featured on these pages for its “schizo price drops,” the Northwest Baptist Seminary campus recently got another big $500k price drop along with a new listing agent who provided a brand new set of photos (below) that are considerably less worthy of a $6.4 million listing than the previous set (above).
“This grand lady offers 24/7 doorman and valet service.”
And potted plants! Did we mention the potted plants? Not enough space in the marketing remarks? Well, throw a picture in there, then!
“Beautiful landscaping, 2 patios for entertaining, hot tub, 2 car garage, shed for yard tools all bathed in full sun from morning to sunset.”
…except of course when the sky is full of insanely-saturated HYPERCLOUDS. Needs to be viewed full size to be fully appreciated.
“…one floor condo, with new cozy carpet, gorgeous rock wall fireplace, super spacious living room…”
Nothing says “I’m earning my three percent commission” like listing photos taken with a plastic toy camera.
“Get in on the ground floor.”
Okay so this one isn’t in the Seattle area, but seriously, this was just too rich to resist.
“Nice house! Walk to the Beech!!!”
Also not in Seattle, but irresistible. $589,000 in Huntington Beach. Or should I say “Huntington Beech.”
Let me know if you have an idea for a future “Real Actual Listing Photos” theme.
The Brick Mansion One Looks Like a Typical Ghost Hunters’ Haunt
I can just see their black vans out front, as they unwind the camera wire to launch another investigation for SyFy….
Condos often have a picture of the sign for the complex. It lets people familiar with the area know which complex the unit is in. That’s often difficult/impossible to determine from interior photos. The alternative is an exterior shot of the building. Often the sign is better looking!
I’m clicking back to the redfin site again for these photos. Actually I signed up into the redfin data base to leave a comment on one of the forums.
Glenn Kelman being the ETrade of residential Real Estate is pretty rich, but the forums are a hoot.
Browsing though the comments is a very good indication of what has happened to the Real Estate market place. Any thought that some one would get information there is over shadowed by the agents working the site.
Since the vignetting is absolutely uniform, and identical in all the photos for the listing, I’d say that “Toy Plastic Camera” is actually smartphone software that (poorly) simulates vintage photography, e.g. CameraBag, Hipstamatic, Lo-Mob, etc.
It could also be Photoshop or Lightroom or other desktop software, but I’d bet my hat on the path of least effort.
RE: robotslave @ 4 –
Yeah
The disposable 35mm’s for $3.00 a piece and 800 film in door fast film would make this look like a joke too and the jpegs from 35mm film negatives aren’t unloadable to email attachments…because their files are too big and need to be cropped.
RE: David Losh @ 3 – “Actually I signed up into the redfin data base to leave a comment on one of the forums. ”
Kudos on replying to a four-year-old thread where the post prior to yours is dated 10-17-2007 08:10 AM…
Greetings from Southern California. I thought you might get a kick out of this one too:
http://media.cdn-redfin.com/photo/46/bigphoto/276/P804276_24_0.jpg
RE: ChrisM @ 6 –
It’s a business. The real values never change. /
The overly dramatic clouds are shopped in to direct your attention away from the house.
RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 2 – I guess with HOA dues of $908 a month, I’d expect a better looking sign!
I’ve been to 29 Palms, and I’d be suprised if you could sell 5 acres without water in the middle of that desert for $5,000, never mind over $30,000.
“Walk to the beech” – hope you’re in shape, because it’s more than a mile away!
RE: ChrisM @ 6 –
That’s the way the forum works. I replied to another comment, but then it took my comment back to the sequence. Anyway, who cares? Why would you care?
It’s just interesting that the forums are set up as another “guide” to a home purchase at retail pricing. Watch the charts, they know all.
RE: Scotsman @ 7 –
It’s a business, the values never change.
RE: Peter Witting @ 11 – ““Walk to the beech” – hope you’re in shape, because it’s more than a mile away!”
Hahaha, awesome. Technically they didn’t say “beach”. Maybe there’s a Beech tree nearby.
The listing should say: “Photo Credit: Edvard Munch.”
By softwarengineer @ 1:
Or maybe this van.
I’ve never been on an acid trip but somehow I think it would look like #3.
In #6 I’d constantly be crashing into things since it appears to exist in some bizarro land where the laws of perspective have been repealed.
By Jeff Murdock @ 14:
Hilarious. You nailed it.
By Peter Witting @ 11:
If that’s the building I’m thinking of, they have quite the staff. That’s not cheap.
And if it is the building I’m thinking of, the owners voted early in the life of the building to repaint it, because they didn’t like the paint. It was a rather expensive paintjob.
I recognize the style of those “insanely-saturated HYPERCLOUDS.” That’s a long lost Van Gogh worth about $92 million!
I’ve always thought that HDR photography like the example with the clouds shouldn’t be allowed for real estate listings. It’s incredibly misleading but seems to be pretty commonplace now.
RE: Ryan @ 19 – No different than the extreme photoshopping that goes on for magazine cover model pictures, and that’s been going on for far longer. Some of those photos are so heavily modified, you wouldn’t even recognize the person if they were standing right behind you in the checkout line!
The super saturation pictures using HDR is so surreal in the listings and Zillow that I can’t judge from the pictures how the property really looks. If it was just clouds, that would be okay to me now. The pictures now are so distorted that they are on the edge of unreality.
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