What are the Most Popular Real Estate Listing Photos? New HomeJab Study Reveals the Answers
A new study of real estate photography data from HomeJab finds that the most popular real estate listing photo is not the home’s front exterior. Instead, bedroom photos were ranked first, barely nudging out kitchen photos. Front exterior shots placed a distant fifth.
HomeJab, which provides real estate agents on-demand professional real estate photography and other visual production services in all 50 states, partnered with Artificial Intelligence firm Restb.ai to study more than 14,000 photos of homes for sale.
Professional real estate photographers hired by listing agents took the images used for the research from a random selection of 600 properties listed for sale in early June 2022.
The HomeJab study – using Restb.ai computer vision technology – found:
1. Bedroom photos topped the list. More than one in ten images used to sell a home were bedroom photos (11.92%).
2. Kitchen photos came in second place, just 1/50th of one percent lower than bedroom photos (11.90%).
3. Living room photos took the third spot, with 10.79%.
4. Bathroom photos were No. 4 with 9.75%.
5. Front exterior photos rounded out the top 5 most popular real estate listing photos with 8.70%.
“When you scroll through listings of homes for sale online, typically, you see an exterior shot,” said Joe Jesuele, founder and CEO of HomeJab. “But that’s not the most popular photo that real estate photographers capture. Instead, professionally shot photos of the kitchen and bedroom are the most common ones used to help sell homes,” he said.
HomeJab enlisted the help of real estate’s leading computer vision firm, Restb.ai, to automatically sort through thousands of photographs from homes currently for sale, use its computer vision technology to identify the type of photo, and then classify and sort the images.
“What would take a research team hundreds of total people hours to accomplish manually, Restb.ai was able to provide these research results in minutes,” noted the founder and CEO of Restb.ai, Xavi Hernando.
HomeJab’s Jesuele explains that using only professionally shot real estate photos improves the quality of the study findings because research shows that high-quality, professional real estate photos are more effective in selling homes.
He notes that past research from the Center for Realtor Development shows that professional real estate photography helps homes sell 32 percent faster. And homes in the $200,000 to $1 million price range sell for $3,000 to $11,000 more when using professional images.
Rounding out the Top 15 listing photos in the HomeJab study were:
6. Dining area – 4.48%
7. Aerial – 4.32%
8. Yard – 3.00%
9. Back exterior – 2.48%
10. Patio terrace – 2.10%
11. Home office – 1.84%
12. Laundry room – 1.81%
13. Deck – 1.72%
14. Hallway – 1.39%
15. Foyer – 1.26%
The bottom six were Basement (1.22%), Garage (1.12%), Front door (1.11%), Pool (1.11%), Stairs (.93%) and Walk-In closets (.66%). Other photos comprised the remaining 16.38%.
Jesuele added, “It will be interesting to see if these numbers change over time – especially with the increased accessibility and use of drone footage for aerial photography and video. And because of the pandemic, will we see more photos of home offices in the future? Time will tell.”
A summary report on this new HomeJab study is available here.
