Estate Agents on DAFT

Southsider1

Am I the nly one that gets really peed off with DAFT.ie in the sense that the agents can't be arsed to put up more than one photo of the property usually the outside. Can they not see that it would be helpful if they put up a series of pics of the house inside and outside....or is it just me?:mad:

steph1

No its not just you. I agree people want to see the inside of a property especially the living room and kitchen. Not too bothered about seeing bathrooms or toilets but also the back garden should be shown.
Is it just pure laziness on the part of these agents? I mean how hard is it to take a few photos and stick them on the site? Unless the owners of the properties have instructed them not to do so well thats a different issue.

athtrasna

If there's only an exterior pic that's a huge warning sign. Doesn't bode well for the interior!!

steph1

True you might think they had somethin to hide
Havin said that I sold a house in Dublin a few years ago and the estate agent was really particular. Had to clear out any unnecessary clutter even the pet's beds had to be hidden but one thing he was not interested in was taking pictures of bathrooms and he told me so. Was not too bothered about that.
I have seen a few nice bungalows and cottages that I might be interested in but it really does turn me off by having only the picture of the outside of the house. Dread to think what awaits when one goes through the door

shoegirl

In fairness, for years we had to make do with a one line description and discover how grotty it was when you got there! I also remember a time when the rent would already have risen by as much as 20 pounds a week by the time you came to view the place.

The other GOOD thing is a few letters are now using fisheye lenses to photograph place so you get a good idea of what the interior is like.

The bad ones:
1. grotty and unmaintained back yards
2. photgraphing the view out the window when its horrible
3. not bothering to rotate the views
4. photos that actually put you off the place (i.e. its possible to see heavily worn furniture or badly stained carpets - or my personal favourite, a "3 piece suite" made up of the leftovers of 3 different 3 piece suies)
5. cardinal sin is photographing lots of personal belongings from previous tenant
6. . . . or no furniture in a "furnished" flat
7. or shooting oneself in the foot by having a portable heater in the photo of a place that supposedly has "central heating"
8. finally, photos that show all the furniture wedged together indicating that the place actually is tiny and a boxroom rather than a "double bedroom"
9 or divans where the matress doesn't match the base (i.e. landlord too mean and stingy too replace a 20 year old worn out bed)
10 and the final, worst case scenario - photographs that show a dehumidifier in the flat - need I say more!!

loyatemu

based on looking at Daft and MyHome I've come to the conclusion that most estate agents are lazy idiots:

• photos of the outside only
• even worse - photos of the outside and only one or two of the rooms - jesus, if you went inside the house why didn't you photograph all the rooms?!
• out of focus photos
• photos of rooms that are a complete mess - your trying to sell the house, tidy up damnit!
• I've even see photos with people\kids\dogs etc in shot.

Zamboni

I had a chat with an EA about this once and he said smugly to me, 'I will sell you the house when you are there, not on a website'.

Not a very effective tactic if nobody turns up at the house due to the crap ad...

bladebrew

Zamboni wrote: »

I had a chat with an EA about this once and he said smugly to me, 'I will sell you the house when you are there, not on a website'.

Not a very effective tactic if nobody turns up at the house due to the crap ad...

it must have been during the boom:)

putting up one pic or only pictures of the outside does suggest the inside is in ribbons!!

smellslikeshoes

Too many estate agents still think it's the boom years and can get away with just throwing up an outdoor picture and a price and expect people to be lineing up.

kwyjibot

I think now that the boom times are over natural selection is starting to take care of those agents who don't bother with many/any photos, have poor descriptions, etc.

I was keeping an eye on sale properties in west Dublin over the last while, and the difference in the quality of ads for similarly-priced properties was crazy.
Some agents would have 20-30 photos up (even having multiple angles of the staircase!) while others would have one of the outside and maybe one of the hall, if you were lucky. Over time you start to notice which properties were getting marked as "sale agreed"/removed from daft (hint: not the ads with only one photo!), and which ones were left.

In a depressed market, word is going to get around pretty quickly about which agents are actually selling/renting out property, and the business will go towards them. If you compare the rentals on daft now to 4/5 years ago, 1 photo would have made your ad stand out then, so over time agents/landlords copped on to this and would start to throw up any old photo to make their place stand out and get it rented more quickly.
Now that nearly everyone puts up at least one photo, the smart ones are those who are putting up more photos, more accurate details, making viewing appointments at flexible times, etc, and these are likely to be the ones still in business in a year's time.

I think as Zamboni said, there are still a lot of agents who aren't quite convinced that this online lark is more than a fad, and these are the ones who are going to struggle to stay in business as their competitors put some effort in to their ads on daft/myhome/etc!

Patrickof

The logic behind having only 1 photo goes as follows:

Houses don't get sold by the internet, it is only there to enable purchasers to see whats available. The auctioneer will be best able to sell the house when talking to the purchaser face to face at a viewing or after a viewing. Having extra photos (unless the house is absolutely immaculate and decluttered) only serves to put people off contacting the auctioneer, internal photos by themselves rarely encourage someone to take their interest further. Additionally, a lot of photos tend to portray the rooms as being smaller than in real life so can look bad in a photo, but look good in real life.

Finally, some folk just won't make the effort to make the house presentable enough to be photographed, and bad photos are worse than no photos.

The objective of an ad is to get some interest in the property, not to sell the house by itself.

kwyjibot

Patrickof wrote: »

internal photos by themselves rarely encourage someone to take their interest further.

From my own experience, I'd feel the complete opposite on this.

As I mentioned above, the area we were looking at had a number of agents who were putting a lot of effort into their ads (multiple photos, etc), and a number who weren't.
When we were putting together a list of places we were interested in to arrange viewings, photos of the interior were definitely a differentiating factor. As you rightly say, having bad photos of the interior would most likely rule a place out (clutter lying around, clothes horses out, rooms mid-decoration with paint pots etc everywhere..), but it would rule them out in favour of those places we could get a good look at and have a feel for before going to view it in the flesh.

Those ads which were listed with only an exterior photo looked to us like they're hiding something, and were treated the same as those with the poor quality internal photos, i.e. maybe worth a look if the price was crazy-good, but otherwise a likely waste of time.

Patrickof wrote: »

The objective of an ad is to get some interest in the property, not to sell the house by itself.

Absolutely, the whole purpose of advertising is to drum up interest so the estate agent can do what they're best at and close the deal in person. But if the ad is not an appealing one, it's going to be a lot more difficult than it needs to be to get the potential buyer to make contact.

What I find puzzling is that so many agents seem to treat internet advertising as such a special case - the same people who spend plenty of money on glossy brochures for their shop, fancy print ads in the Times/Indo/weekend supplements, etc are balking at the idea of putting even a fraction of that effort in to online ads, where the marginal cost of adding extra photos to Daft, myhome etc is only the time needed to take the things and upload them.

I was renting for 5 years and bought last year, and have never once been inside an estate agent's shop, made a call based on an ad in the Herald, etc - I've only ever ever gone for a place based on ads I've seen online, and it's been pretty much the same for all of my friends in their mid-20s to mid-30s.

shoegirl

As it happens I'm nosing around Daft at the moment as my lease expires in May so getting a feel for what I will pay and where I will go.

Quite frankly, when there are 20+ similar properties in an area almost all looking for the same rent, I will immediately eliminate the ones without photos first. Then the ones without parking and central heating, and finally, I'll scan the remaining ones for scam artists who think "central heating" is storage or portable electrics. That will generally reduce the list to 4 or 5 potential places. Most people don't have the time to ring around 10 or more places so they will look at what stands out first and filter from there.

Actually the main reason I do this is because I am looking for somewhere small and words like "apartment" and "pre-1963 conversion" are used interchangeably.

Another giveaway is "all mod cons." Does that mean they supply a microwave? Or landlords that think that having a plug for a phone and cable merits adding ticks to the boxes for internet and phone!

Zamboni

Patrickof wrote: »

The logic behind having only 1 photo goes as follows:

Houses don't get sold by the internet, it is only there to enable purchasers to see whats available. The auctioneer will be best able to sell the house when talking to the purchaser face to face at a viewing or after a viewing. Having extra photos (unless the house is absolutely immaculate and decluttered) only serves to put people off contacting the auctioneer, internal photos by themselves rarely encourage someone to take their interest further. Additionally, a lot of photos tend to portray the rooms as being smaller than in real life so can look bad in a photo, but look good in real life.

Finally, some folk just won't make the effort to make the house presentable enough to be photographed, and bad photos are worse than no photos.

The objective of an ad is to get some interest in the property, not to sell the house by itself.

The flaw with this logic is the simple fact that some people think
1 photo or no photo = hole
Hence, no further contact, no sale.

I prefer honest warts 'n' all photos. At least you know what you're giving up your free time to see in advance.
I get pissed off seeing one photo ads where the front of the house is fantastic and then when you get there, the inside is a dump.
Thanks for wasting my Saturday afternoon EA gombeen.

shoegirl

Thats true. Also fancy writing suggesting "lovely place - won't be on the market long" and then you see on Daft its been up since last october!

Or "luxury penthouse apartment" that is actually a very ordinary conversion. (There was one of these last week on Daft. The filth of the kitchen carpet says it all.)

Southsider1

Patrickof wrote: »

The logic behind having only 1 photo goes as follows:

Houses don't get sold by the internet, it is only there to enable purchasers to see whats available. The auctioneer will be best able to sell the house when talking to the purchaser face to face at a viewing or after a viewing. Having extra photos (unless the house is absolutely immaculate and decluttered) only serves to put people off contacting the auctioneer, internal photos by themselves rarely encourage someone to take their interest further. Additionally, a lot of photos tend to portray the rooms as being smaller than in real life so can look bad in a photo, but look good in real life.


The objective of an ad is to get some interest in the property, not to sell the house by itself.

the comments on this thread confound your theory Patrick. I discard ads without pics and I'm not the only one. As usual agents have their heads so far u........ they don't/won't listen to potential clients.

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

Patrickof wrote: »

The logic behind having only 1 photo goes as follows:

Are you an estate agent?

Houses don't get sold by the internet, it is only there to enable purchasers to see whats available.

Rubbish, the internet does sell the property and so do the pictures. Estate agents are not sales people at all, they are more like door men. They hold the keys and show me around. Where things are etc etc. Funny how some of them act. "It's a lovely area" Yea? Then why is there a pieball horse on the football pitch and a burnt out car down the road?

Large spacious luxurious mod con house... RUBBISH. It's a bedsit with an old 2 ring cooker and one press. It may have had the mod cons 20 years ago, but not now.

The auctioneer will be best able to sell the house when talking to the purchaser face to face at a viewing or after a viewing.

Actioneers don't sell houses, houses sell houses.

Having extra photos (unless the house is absolutely immaculate and decluttered) only serves to put people off contacting the auctioneer

More rubbish I see? If I have to travel to view a house, spend my time and put in an effort to view a house, I want to have some idea of what it looks like. I know what I want, you don't. You think you know what I want, but that is your downfall.

internal photos by themselves rarely encourage someone to take their interest further.

You are talking to people here, not monkeys. You are the very same as an estate agent telling me that the 6X6 (foot) room we are huddled in is massive, or the mold on the walls "adds character". Do they actually believe what they are saying is going to sell a house?

I challanged an EA once because there was no extractor fan, he had the cheek to tell me that regular cooking was not intended for these houses. Like wtf?

Additionally, a lot of photos tend to portray the rooms as being smaller than in real life so can look bad in a photo, but look good in real life.

More rubbish. I can't believe you are trying to tell us that it's best to have no pictures up. Do you not understand how ilogical that sounds?

Finally, some folk just won't make the effort to make the house presentable enough to be photographed, and bad photos are worse than no photos.

That's the point. So people can see the kip before they travel and waste their time viewing it. Why would anybody want to view a house that is unpresentable? Me, like a lot of people, completely ignore adverts that do not have sufficient information, such as photos. Do you know why?

194,495 properties online (1,755 in the last 24 hours)

From Daft.ie

The objective of an ad is to get some interest in the property, not to sell the house by itself.

Pictures speak for themselves, and for the nonsense and lies that spurt from the mouths of EA's I rather have the pictures thank you.



OP you are right, no pictures and it will be ignored.

Another thing about EA's is the crap they post on the description. I did see one EA describe an apartment as "compact", which was correct. How is it that hard? Do EA's think that if they tell us it is very spacious that we will then view it that way? Would be best if EA's just kept their gobs shut and only answer questions the potential tenants have.

Graces7

When I had decent internet access, looking at properties for rent on daft was a kind of hobby.

One nearby was advertised as with parking space.

Described in glowing terms; lots of natural light etc. Rural with beautiful views...

We checked it from the outside; it is at the back of a farmyard with cattle at the back window and by a farmhouse with several cars in front.

And everyone knows that few rentals have decent furniture etc. You see it advertised in "The Dealer" here as "suitable for a rental" ie junk they want rid of. "Well wedo not know who we are going to get.."

Got a brush with no bristles left? A bucket with no handle? Off to the rental. Old odd bits of crockery and cutlery? It'll do for the rental.

We now have our own gas cooker as the electric ones in the last two places were so antiquated they barely worked. So we make them take the junk out now.

Also many of the photos on the ads were taken years before. One bungalow we saw online had a lovely garden and many photos. When it changed to a different agency, only one photo. The garden had clearly been blitzed with weedkiller and the white front was filthy and scruffy.

The only way is to go and see of course, with a check list. Even so, there is no guarantee.

shoegirl

Graces7 wrote: »

And everyone knows that few rentals have decent furniture etc. You see it advertised in "The Dealer" here as "suitable for a rental" ie junk they want rid of. "Well wedo not know who we are going to get.."

Got a brush with no bristles left? A bucket with no handle? Off to the rental. Old odd bits of crockery and cutlery? It'll do for the rental.

We now have our own gas cooker as the electric ones in the last two places were so antiquated they barely worked. So we make them take the junk out now.

Those days are gone. There might have been an excuse 20 years ago when any kind of suite of furniture could cost 2 or 3 months salary, but now we have IKEA, you have fit out a flat or house for a tiny amount. Plus if you are intent on putting in poor quality appliances, you are bound to carry out repairs and these will be very expensive for no name white goods. Most landlords now try to put in goods that keep maintenance costs low. With so much choice on the market now, most tenants won't even look at places with delapidated fixures and furnishings, and if you search Daft you'll probably find that unless they are well below market rate, these places are not shifting.

Graces7

Are you in Dublin, or a city?

Try rural Donegal.. and needing a low cost rental.

It may be different here from there...

shoegirl wrote: »

Those days are gone. There might have been an excuse 20 years ago when any kind of suite of furniture could cost 2 or 3 months salary, but now we have IKEA, you have fit out a flat or house for a tiny amount. Plus if you are intent on putting in poor quality appliances, you are bound to carry out repairs and these will be very expensive for no name white goods. Most landlords now try to put in goods that keep maintenance costs low. With so much choice on the market now, most tenants won't even look at places with delapidated fixures and furnishings, and if you search Daft you'll probably find that unless they are well below market rate, these places are not shifting.