How Many Listing Photos Are Too Many? The Case for Curating the Story

There is a natural temptation when marketing a home to photograph everything.

The sellers are often emotionally attached to the home. They spent months choosing the kitchen finishes. There’s a charming flower box on the garden shed, custom shelving in a guest bedroom and a dozen other details they understandably want prospective buyers to see. As real estate professionals, however, it’s worth remembering that the goal of listing photography isn’t to document a property. It’s to market it. And those are two very different things.

Photos should create interest, not replace the showing

For most buyers, the online listing is now the beginning of the home-buying experience. According to the National Association of REALTORS®, 52% of buyers found the home they ultimately purchased online, and 81% rated listing photos as the most useful feature in their online home search. 

That makes photography enormously important. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that more photography is always better. A successful gallery should answer the buyer’s big questions: What does the house look like? How do the principal spaces relate to one another? What are its strongest features? What makes this property different from the others I’m considering? And, ultimately: Do I want to see this house in person?

The objective isn’t necessarily to answer every possible question before the buyer ever walks through the door.

There really can be too much of a good thing

Interestingly, there is research supporting the idea that there is a point of diminishing returns.

Zillow Research analyzed the relationship between listing characteristics and time on market and found that homes with fewer than nine photographs were about 20% less likely to sell within 60 days than homes with 22–27 photos. But the study found something interesting at the other end of the spectrum as well: listings containing 28 or more photos actually sold somewhat more slowly than those containing 22–27. Zillow subsequently incorporated that research into its seller photography guidance, recommending roughly 22–27 images for a typical listing. 

There is an important caveat. The Zillow study is older, and correlation isn't causation. The homes with 28+ photographs were also more expensive, received fewer page views and tended to be priced further above Zillow's estimated market value—all factors associated with longer selling times. So the research doesn't prove that adding photo number 28 somehow hurts a listing.

What it does suggest is something useful: once you've adequately shown a property, simply adding more photographs doesn't necessarily make the marketing more effective.

Think like an editor, not an archivist

If one photograph beautifully communicates the size, light and character of a bedroom, do buyers really need four slightly different views of it? If we've already established the kitchen with two strong compositions, does a fifth photograph of the same kitchen provide new information? Good visual storytelling has a rhythm. Establish the property. Introduce the primary living spaces. Reveal the important secondary spaces and distinctive features. Show the exterior, setting and lifestyle. Use details selectively when they contribute something meaningful. Then stop.

In fact, Zillow's own photography advice makes an important distinction: photographers should take plenty of photographs, but the listing should feature the best ones selected during editing. 

Of course, 25 isn't a magic number

A three-bedroom home on a quarter-acre lot and a 100-acre waterfront estate shouldn't have identical photo counts. Large luxury homes, historic properties, farms, equestrian estates and waterfront properties can legitimately require considerably more photography because there is simply more of the story to tell. Conversely, a small condominium might be thoroughly represented with fewer images.

So rather than asking, "How many photos did we get?" a better question is: "Does every photograph contribute something to the story?"

If photograph number 42 reveals a waterfront view, guest house or architectural feature that buyers haven't seen yet, it has a job to do. If it's the fourth angle of the laundry room, probably not.

Leave buyers something to discover

Great listing photography isn't about withholding important information or trying to hide flaws. Accuracy matters: buyers should arrive at a showing and recognize the property they saw online. NAR specifically cautions that buyers expect the home they liked online to correspond with what they encounter in person.  But there's a difference between accurately representing a property and exhaustively documenting it. Our job as marketers is to identify what makes a home compelling, communicate those qualities efficiently and create enough interest that a prospective buyer takes the next step. Sometimes the strongest listing isn't the one that shows the buyer everything.

It's the one that shows them just enough to make them want to see more.

Sources: Zillow Research: Searched It, Saw It, Bought It · Zillow: Real Estate Photography Tips for Home Sellers · National Association of REALTORS®: How to Maximize Online Visibility for Every Listing · NAR: How to Prepare for the Photo Shoot