At higher price points, busier agents can spend a couple or a few hundred dollars on contracting out the photography to a professional photographer. While these professional photos are generally very good, most are only technically good. That is, the photos are in focus, well lit, sharp, have (sometimes) wide-angle, and have generally good composition, but they have become too standardized and commodified. (Featured photo: CRMLS)

Usually, they provide the same generic format: The view is triangular with the narrowest point of the room in the middle with floor and ceiling converging there from both sides at the same angles. After a while, one shot looks the same as the other, even though it is a different room or different part of the house. Even a large house isn’t that exciting, after all. (Photo above: CRMLS).

In addition, some agents also contract out the staging to professionals who depersonalize and de-clutter to the extreme. While it is important to depersonalize the home in staging so as to permit the greatest room for the buyer’s imagination to flower about living there as the new owners, it goes far if you can also show that the property was well lived, homey, distinctive, and comfortable to a real human being.

That is, the homes are generally well-staged and the photos are well done, but the images don’t show enough life, individuality, warmth, and personality and look too much like factory mass produced model homes or some austere castle on a hill. It does not feel lived in by real people. Rather, it looks an expensive furniture store. (Photo above: CRMLS).