I have been doing this real estate for thirty eight years. And most of that time I’ve been preaching about how great captions for your pictures are. But a lot of sellers are just too busy to do it. But not to busy to ask what more they can do to make their house sell faster! I updated this article from 2019. Five years ago and little is different.

Let’s face it.  What do your pictures do most of the time on your FSBO listing?  They sit around.  Or lie there.  They may be the perfect exposure – not too dark or too light.  They may be well composed and sharply focused.  They may be Goldilocks JUST RIGHT!

But do they talk to you?  Do they speak to the viewer and engage conversation, or do they just cause them to say “nice picture,” and move on to the next listing?  While you keep driving around the block, you may be overlooking the empty parking space by the front door.

An Empty Caption Box

A vacant photo text field is a terrible thing to waste.  There is a finite amount of useable space in an MLS listing.  Most text areas under the photos are unused.  That is a lot of space.  If your MLS system and/or the MLS-only plan you purchased gives you, for instance 20 pictures, and each picture could hold 100 characters, that is 2000 letters and spaces.

That could be huge.  Picture captions should be conversational-styled sentences.  Bullet lists don’t translate well or look good in pix captions.  But that amount of letters could sell a lot of sizzle with that steak!

Don’t insult the viewer’s intelligence.

Don’t just use this newly discovered to tell the prospect that this room is a bathroom and this space is the foyer.  Give them a break- they already know that.

Tell them what they don’t know.

We put all new Cat-5 cable behind this wall.  Through this window, early in the morning, if you squint your eyes just right, you can see Stonehenge.  Stuff the picture isn’t telling them.  (Tap or click here for more on Cat-5 cable.) (Tap or click here for more on Stonehenge.)

Responsibilities of your FSBO Listing’s Visuals

The first assignment belongs to the primary photo.  Some call that shot the mailbox photo or the “identifier” so someone can tell the house from the street.  That photo’s primary assignment is to catch the attention of the casual viewer, and draw it to that particular house.  It needs to be eye-catching and different, but, at this point, it doesn’t even need picture captions at all.  All it has to do is to catch the attention of the prospective buyer and concentrate it toward the subject house.

The next task belongs to the media page that houses all the other photos of the house.  This is where the captions can sing to the viewer.  The first picture captured the buyer’s attention.  This page of pictures job is to intensify that attention and interest to the point that the prospect decides a good course of action would be to go and tour that particular house.  I wrote this book on FSBO photography a couple of years ago and am still fond of it for detail.

The last visual task of your house belongs to the house itself, now that you have the prospect in place.

Your house will sell itself.  The magic will happen when the buyer first walks into the entryway.  If it doesn’t, no amount of salesmanship will make it happen.  I have written extensively in the past about ways you can free up your house to be more likely to let that magic happen, but this is not the place for that.  Now that the purchaser may have arrived, it is up to the house only.

A Short Equation

You see, at this point, how short is the route to finding a new owner, so given that brevity, realize how important the responsibility of the captions under the pictures.  Just consider not ignoring them.  Depending on the structure of your listing, you may have to pay extra for these pieces of text.  You should do so- they are worth it.

Also you might refer to my post,   “BACK TO SQUARE ONE.”

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Photo by J. Remus on Unsplash

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