A local landlord told me my property photos were making him scroll past my listings

I've been listing commercial spaces in Detroit for about two years now and I always thought my photos were fine. Bright lights, wide angles, the whole deal. Then this guy who owns a few buildings on Gratiot called me out after an open house and said my photos looked like every other listing on LoopNet. He was right. I was just shooting empty rooms with no context. So I started staging one office space with a desk, a plant, and a framed print on the wall. That one property got three calls in a week versus the usual zero. Now I'm rethinking every single listing I have up. Has anyone else tried staging cheap spaces or am I just wasting my time on a trend?

3 comments

3 Comments

fiona_murphy1mo ago

The staging thing works way better than it sounds like it should. I started throwing a cheap folding chair and a potted fake plant in the corner of my smaller units and it made a huge difference in how many people actually showed up. The trick is to keep it minimal so it doesn't distract from the actual space but gives the brain something to latch onto. For bigger spaces I even rented a table and some chairs for a weekend showing and got an offer on a place that had sat for months.

sandraflores24d ago

Yeah, the "brain latching on" thing is exactly right. People can't picture an empty room as a living space, but throw a chair and a plant in there and suddenly their brain fills in the rest. It's like giving their imagination a little push. I started doing the same thing after reading some study about how staged photos get way more clicks than empty ones. Even a single couch and a cheap rug in a corner helped me move a unit that had been sitting for two months. The key is keeping it simple, like you said, because too much stuff makes people focus on the furniture instead of the room itself.

taraanderson1mo ago

The folding chair and fake plant trick is genius because it costs basically nothing but gives people a reason to stop scrolling. I'd bet even just one bright colored pillow on a windowsill would catch someone's eye enough to click through.