I understand the perception you guys have of realtors. But it is seriously flawed. Sure there are unethical realtors. Sure there are realtors that took the test and have no experience. These folks usually don’t do well. Word of mouth is key and knowledge is everything. To say selling new construction isn’t sales is absurd. My wife has open houses every weekend on new construction. Heck we’ve toured people through our own home (same builder) to show the quality. She’s constantly searching for land and researching if it’s buildable before presenting it to her builders. She is on the phone with the builder and client constantly. Not only before the sale contract, but throughout construction. She’s doing change orders, dealing with lenders, dealing with appraisers. It’s absolutely insane the amount of work she does.

Apart from the new construction the amount she knows about all the different aspects of real estate makes my biology degree look like a walk in the park.

Of course all of this is why she is a top agent. Not many are as successful as she is.

Back to the OP, my wife agrees. The photographer’s job is to get people in the door. When we were looking I learned fast to see if the oven and fridge looked stretched out. It was a clear indication the room was much smaller than the photo appeared.

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Back to the OP, my wife agrees. The photographer’s job is to get people in the door. When we were looking I learned fast to see if the oven and fridge looked stretched out. It was a clear indication the room was much smaller than the photo appeared.

Don't want to start a micturition contest, but IMO that doesn't change the fact that it's dishonest.

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Originally posted by PHPaul:

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Back to the OP, my wife agrees. The photographer’s job is to get people in the door. When we were looking I learned fast to see if the oven and fridge looked stretched out. It was a clear indication the room was much smaller than the photo appeared.

Don't want to start a micturition contest, but IMO that doesn't change the fact that it's dishonest.

I don’t disagree. Much like the pics of women on the dating apps.

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Originally posted by PHPaul:

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Back to the OP, my wife agrees. The photographer’s job is to get people in the door. When we were looking I learned fast to see if the oven and fridge looked stretched out. It was a clear indication the room was much smaller than the photo appeared.

Don't want to start a micturition contest, but IMO that doesn't change the fact that it's dishonest.

Some photographers are dishonest in their overuse of Photoshop. That, I can agree with.

Many Photographers simply suck, and won't spend the time to correct for exposure and white balance carefully, so their solution is to just crank up the brightness or remove all the blue from the picture (look around the floors by the window, is it unusually gray/desaturated?).

I don't have issues with the use of wide angle lenses. That's simply a limitation of technology. Your eyeballs sit side by side in your head, and they swivel both in their sockets and on top of your head. Your brain composites what it sees, and the result is that you can see the whole room when you stand in the corner and look out.

To mimic being able to see the whole room, photographers use a wide angle lens. The technology limitation is when trying to place this wide, semicircular capture onto a flat rectangular image which causes the corners to be disproportionately stretched out. Without it, you'd get a weird bubble-like circular image that just looks unnatural, or you'd need two or three images from the same corner but at different angles panning the room.

There's some use now of 360 degree images that you can pan around in yourself (often miscalled 3D Home Tours), but my experience is people rarely take the time to interact with them.

Went to look at another house for my daughter today.

1970's raised ranch, 4 bedroom, 2 bath, VA Repo. For a change, the photog was honest about the condition.

Previous owner abdicated in the middle of a remodel so there's no trim around windows, no mop boards, rough drywall in spots, whole interior needs painting. This is all stuff that can be done while living in the house. It's been winterized so no real way to check some of the utilities, but the bones are good, the roof is good, the plumbing is PEX and PVC for the drain and waste and it has new composite floors throughout and in-floor hot water heat. The heating system is quite recent and obviously professionally installed with extensive zoning, plenty of valves for isolation.

The bank listed it at $175K but it'll no doubt go for well over that. Daughter put in a bid at $208K but I doubt that'll buy it.

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Originally posted by PHPaul:
and in-floor hot water heat

Interesting. Is that supplemental heat, or the primary heat for the house?

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Originally posted by RogueJSK:

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Originally posted by PHPaul:
and in-floor hot water heat

Interesting. Is that supplemental heat, or the primary heat for the house?

Primary. AFAIK, Only.

Have friends with a VERY old house that retrofitted it. Plywood over original floors with "tracks" routed in it for tubing channels, ceramic tile over that. Very comfortable.

There are some honest, or more likely lazy, photographers out there. My favorite was a house we looked at that had dead cockroaches on a dark floor. I noticed them in person, went back and looked at the photos, and sure enough they were in the photos (but a bit hard to spot with the low contrast).

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Originally posted by 41:
Real Estate Agents have got to be one of the most over paid and dishonest professions around.

I am due a break sooner than later.

The last one kept my analysis of the lot, adjoining sold properties and letter from interested party. I was lucky to get the key to the gate back.

Looks like the Broker never looked at my lot. I checked the game camera's which he doesn't know about and no broker unless he is invisible. What a waste of time.

Well regarding real estate agents, my wife just stated, very loudly that "Real Estate Licenses need to be harder to get!!!"

She's been dealing with a lot of idiots that have no idea what they are doing. It's doubling her work. So I'll qualify my opinion with some real estate agents make lots of money because they work for it. Perhaps some don't work so hard for it but most of those shitty ones only do a few transactions per year.

Wife is now dealing with an agent about to lose their clients $25,000 deposit because they want to throw in a mortgage contingency after having signed a cash offer.

While we are at it. Might I add, how about some pictures of the garage and parking, if there is any. I don't want a home/residence where I have to park on the street.

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Originally posted by coloradohunter44:
While we are at it. Might I add, how about some pictures of the garage and parking, if there is any. I don't want a home/residence where I have to park on the street.

Great point. Yards are important to me. Wife looks at bedrooms and baths. I look at kitchen, garage, yard grill area. I can sleep and shower anywhere. But I need space for my grills and tools.