MLS Musings – Photo Edition!

MLS Musings!

3 minute read

November 9, 2015

This post used to be about the text in the MLS listings, and the crazy things listing agents will write about the property, or the typos, or the inaccuracies.

But a picture paints a thousand words!

And now it seems the photos on MLS provide for much better musings, and some delightful entertainment at 8:42am on a Monday morning.  Oh, if I had a dime for every email from a reader that said something about “spitting out coffee” laughing.  Warms my cold Realtor-heart…

MLSMusings

Let me start with the best one.  Truly, is there any other way?

Using my amazing skills in Paint, I put together all fifteen photos that accompany this lovely downtown listing.

I found it odd, to start with, that the “feature” photo (ie. the first one) was of the pool and not of the building, or maybe a great shot of the living space.

But I found it even more odd that all of the photos of the actual unit are SIDEWAYS!

SidewaysPhotos

And that listing didn’t just come onto the market.

It’s not like somebody accidentally uploaded those sideways photos, and then fixed them right away.

That listing has been on the market for two weeks, and nobody representing the listing thought to fix it…

This next one might look pretty unspectacular.

It’s just a photo of a tree – check it out:

40Homewood

But it’s not a photo of a tree.

It’s a photo of 40 Homewood Avenue, BEHIND a tree.

And for some reason, a listing agent thought, “You know what I’ll do?  I’ll take a photo of the building, completely blocked by a tree, and use that as the feature photo on MLS!”

It’s like trying to sell a couch on Craigslist, but the photo shows the couch behind a greasy dumpster, with homeless people sitting on it…

This one is great!

You know how some developments will show an artist’s rendering of the building?

And do you know how some developments will show a scale model of the building?

Well here’s a photo of the scale model, inside the sales centre…

224King

Hey, I love a good toilet as much as the next person.

I really do.

But this listing got REALLY carried away with the toilet photos!

“Johnny, make sure when you go to the unit to photograph the condo, you get the toilet…..from different angles!”

Toilets

 

This is simply marketing at its finest:

TwoPhotos

Wow.

Awesome……ummm……patio stones?

I can’t wait to book a showing!

There’s a few things wrong with this one, but let me show you the photo first:

TinyHouse

1) The photo is tiny.  It only takes up about 1/3 the space provided by MLS, so somebody doesn’t know what a “thumbnail” is.

2) The photo is of three row-houses.

3) The property for sale is actually the one on left (ie with the sign on the lawn!), and they’ve cut off part of the house on the left side!

Here’s the one positive thing I’ll say in this blog post.

Take a look at the photos for this listing at 77 Maitland, where they’ve included a photo of the fact that the building was named “Condo of the Year” in 2015.

That’s definitely something worth marketing!

CondoOfTheYear

And last but not least, is this a hot tub, or a swimming pool?

TedRogersPool

It’s probably too big to be a hot tub.

I mean, I’ve been in hot tubs that large before, but rarely.

And it’s far too small to be a swimming pool.

So what is it?

It’s at 28 Ted Rogers way, and yes, – it’s a swimming pool!

Look, I know we’re not getting 100-metre pools with eight lanes, and if you’re friends with Michael Phelps or Ian Thorpe – they’re not coming over to your condo to swim.

But that “pool” is about 16 feet by 10 feet, and if you didn’t know the person you were in the pool with, it might make it awkward.  There’s nowhere you can stand in that pool where you can’t see the whites of the other person’s eyes!

It’s sad.  The pool, I mean.  It just looks sad.  And when I picture somebody in there, I feel sad, because they’re sad.

And now, I’m sad.

Damn you, Ted Rogers!

Written By David Fleming

David Fleming is the author of Toronto Realty Blog, founded in 2007. He combined his passion for writing and real estate to create a space for honest information and two-way communication in a complex and dynamic market. David is a licensed Broker and the Broker of Record for Bosley – Toronto Realty Group

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7 Comments

  1. Ed

    at 8:13 am

    It’s a swimming pool with built in seating around the edge. NO Diving!

  2. Marina

    at 9:37 am

    Lazy agents I totally get. But how about the morons that hire them? If I looked at what my agent put on MLS and I saw that first set of photos, I’d be raising heck.
    Amazing the types of stupid that own real estate in this city…

  3. Gloria

    at 10:07 am

    How about the ones that dont even bother uploading anything at all with a one sentence description on MLS?

  4. KatLyn

    at 10:22 am

    Or how about the condo listings that have lots of pix of the lobby, maybe the gym, but no pix of the actual condo. Makes you wonder what they don’t want you to see!

  5. condodweller

    at 1:47 pm

    Stop the press! 77 Maitland is condo of the year? I know the building and it has nice amenities to be sure, however they have high maintenance fees with special assessments due to questionable management and a dead beat commercial parking rental company.

    That “pool” definitely looks like it was designed to be a hot tub, perhaps they ran over budget and nixed the jets? Maybe there was a scheduling mix up and they poured the concrete before the jests were installed and they said “nah, screw it, it’s a pool now”.

  6. m

    at 1:48 pm

    When I saw the photo of the tree for 40 Homewood Ave, I assumed they must have just grabbed the photo from Google Maps Steetview. But no, the latter clearly shows the building. I’m stumped.

  7. lui

    at 2:39 pm

    I love how some agents takes multiple photos of the same room at different locations but don’t bother showing the bathroom or the view from the unit.Some agents don’t even bother to update the photos,when you see snow in a July listing then some one doesn’t care about working hard for the seller.

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