Monday, May 14, 2007

The Exploding Sky's Sister

As it's our day job, we've been slightly fascinated by the speed at which various new trends in real estate advertising are picked up by the general Realtor community before reaching their tipping point on the local MLS. Altering the sky on a listing's best facade shot caught on especially quickly, and some brokerages began using (and still do use) the exact same sky background, down to the cloud, on all of their listings.


You'll draw your own marketing line around what's an acceptable version of reality and what's crossed over into "misleading" territory (OK, so one approach is the equivalent of your mother, a talented photographer in her own right, taking a photo of you in your Sunday best, while the other is a lot like spending 8 hours in Photoshop erasing power lines, subbing the neighbor's cracked shale roof with new terra cotta tiles, and distorting perspective enough to make a 10 x 10 room appear to be twice that size.).

Wherever you stand on this one, we think we've spotted the sky trend's new baby sister: the electric blue nightfall shot--Photoshopped into every room in the house.

Pictured above: Sotheby's listing of a 3BR / 2.5BA SFH in Sunnyside, SF ( I said Sunnyside). Listed at $1,700,000 and recorded at 2,564 SF ($663/SF).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

is it wrong if i think this O.K. for Sotheby's but not for anyone else? i expect the pretty and the hype with that brokerage.