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Comment by nathanvanfleet | Hacker News Reader

I don't have a lot of confidence in the skills of a real estate agent over whatever it is that Zillow does to determine the price of homes. From what I've seen real estate agents barely have the skills required to take photos and fill in descriptive fields.

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Why do realtors need skills to take photos and fill in descriptive fields?

Because photos sell properties. My wife went and took about 30 shots of a $500K property that had been on the market for over a year. Within 3 weeks they had it under contract for $495K. The buyers said they had skimmed over the property a time or two in the past but when it popped up on their latest search they actually thought it was a different property because the picture were so much better. Shots from the realtors iPhone just doesn't cut it anymore... You want it sold, you hire someone to take the photos.

And from the other side, I consistently like the properties of certain agencies in my area and I can recognise it's theirs only by the pictures.

Coincidentally, they're the most expensive agency and one of the most successful.

That's like asking why computer programmers need to know how to use a keyboard to input text.

The most basic element of a sale is "what am I buying?". If a realtor cannot sufficiently answer that question through photographs and detailed descriptions, then said realtor has failed on a most basic level.

At the very least, a realtor who lacks the ability to take a good photograph ought to hire the services of someone who does (a.k.a. a photographer).

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