This post comes to us from the Market Leader blog:

Are you really taking photos of your listings with your iPhone? As Dr. Phil says, how's that working for you?

You caution your sellers about the importance of curb appeal. You counsel them to clean up and maybe even stage the home's interior. Then you come along, snap some quick photos on your smartphone and slap them on the MLS.

While curb appeal is your client's responsibility, web appeal is yours. You have one chance to impress – a scant two seconds to grab a buyer's attention without a photograph and 20 seconds with one. Do iPhone photos or those you take with a point-and-shoot camera make optimum use of those valuable seconds?

Why Listing Photos Matter

When the typical buyer looks at an online listing, the first thing she does is look at the photo, according to Michael Seiler, founder and director of the Institute for Behavioral and Experimental Real Estate at Old Dominion University at Norfolk, Va.

"We find that the photo is overwhelmingly viewed first," concludes Seiler's study, "Toward an Understanding of Real Estate Homebuyer Internet Search Behavior: An Application of Ocular Tracking Technology."

Agents that just can't find the time to photograph their listings – an alarmingly common occurrence – and rely on a pithy description instead, may reconsider that behavior in light of the fact that most Internet home shoppers won't even look at listings without photos. Even when a listing includes photos, 40 percent of all participants donn't even look at the agent remarks section.