Is one good picture worth $51,000 more than 1,000 bad ones? In this age of shopping for real state online, it wouldn't surprise me

52 Forest Avenue, Od Greenwich, is back today after a three-month hiatus, marked up to $1.550 million from $1.499. Because that original listing was a brief one, lasting just from November 4th through November 30th, I suspect that it was rushed on to try to capture the last of the fall market, and there wasn’t time to get decent photographs, but I think it’s a mistake to do that these days.

When the internet was new, beginning around 2001 or so, home buyers began starting their searches on sites like Realtor.com, and it took a while for most brokers to catch on. Gradually, they did, and they created their own, more sophisticated sites, with more pictures. The introduction of the iPhone in 2007 accelerated the process, but for a while, most agents used poor-quality photos taken with their new-fangled devices, and the results were what you’d expect. That’s changed, and buyers expect to see better. I think it puts a property at a disadvantage when an iPhone/amateur approach is still used.

This is illustrated here: same agent, but clearer pictures, and far more a far more attractive presentation. Of course, Forest Avenue remains what it is, as does this split-level house, but there's not much one can do about either of those.