Alpharetta Real Estate Homes for Sale

This is a gallery of pictures I recently took of a million-dollar home in The Shoals at Arbor Creek, Cherokee County, GA.

This home was custom-built by Chatham, is on over an acre and features many upgrades.

I wanted to show you these pictures, not only to interest you in the home, which is for sale, by the way, but not on the "open market," but also to give you the experience of viewing the pictures with piclens.

If you don’t already have it, get the piclens viewer from www.piclens.com; that way you’ll get the full experience of viewing these photos on a 3D "wall of photos."  Then make sure to click on the View Awesome 3D Slideshow link below the pictures below.  [Note:  If you don’t get the piclens viewer, you can still view the photos, you just won’t get the full effect.]

I believe that piclens is the future of viewing photos on the web and how every home should be displayed and marketed.  Let me know your thoughts about it by leaving a comment:  Were you able to get it to work?  Was it easier and better than traditional methods.

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PS:  I want to give a tip of the hat to Shack Dougall for writing the piclens plus plug-in for WordPress and for helping modify it to perform for my purposes.  I couldn’t give you this functionality without Shack’s help.  Thanks, Shack.

No Picture Available.  Like shown on the left, that is what is displayed in the MLS when, duh, the agent has not loaded any pictures.

Pictures increasingly tell the story in our visual age.  That explains why home buyers who are browsing homes online are frustrated when they come across a listing with no pictures.  Can the seller even be serious about selling if they don’t post a picture?  Are they trying to hide something?

Would you be surprised if I told you that in February of this year, of the 65,663 Residential and Condominium properties listed in the Multiple Listing Service for the Atlanta metro area, 5,023 had no photos at all?  On top of that, 11,474 only had one photo, when the MLS now allows you to post 12 photos per listing. 

I’m not sure if it is malpractice or laziness, but it is unforgivable for a listing agent to not have at least half a dozen well-taken, well-lighted, well-cropped photos of the home they are marketing.  And solid quality photography should not be reserved only for million-dollar homes.  Digital photography is too inexpensive and easy to learn for every house for sale not to have a photo.

Additionally, the way that people and agents search for homes these days is with "saved searches."  Buyers have predefined searches (if you want one, just contact me and I’ll set you up) that automatically notify them of new homes on the market that meet their criteria.  If there is no photograph when that buyer gets the notification, that buyer is likely to never consider your home again.  You missed your shot.

Photography is a mini-hobby of mine and I take pictures of all sorts of things besides houses, but I’m always looking for ways to take and display house pictures better.  One of the coolest new tools I’ve found is piclens, and you can see an example here of some home photos I’ve taken of an awesome home for sale just north of Alpharetta in East Cherokee county.

As time permits, I’m also adding "face shots" of Alpharetta real estate to Zillow.  I don’t sweat every detail of these photos, but do post them to Zillow so that people using that service from out of state and relocating to Alpharetta can get a better feel for what the properties look like.  They might even call me when they are ready to move…if they like my style ;->

Lastly, I have a collection of what I call lazy realtor photos.  I’m not sure if these are humorous or sad.  For more on bad real estate photos, check out Athol Kay’s MLS Bad Photo of the Day.  Athol has carved a name for himself in the real estate blog sphere just by cataloging other realtors’ photo atrocities.

My Collection of Atlanta Real Estate Photos by Lazy Agents

Agent is either too lazy to get out of the car or doesn’t know how to crop a photo. 

This agent can get out of the car, but doesn’t know how to park on the street. 

This agent was (too) short ;->  Nice roof, though. 

This agent went to art school before real estate. 

This agent can’t see the houses for the trees. 

This agent was actually a fencing contractor! 

So, which is worse, a bad picture or no picture at all?  You should never have to find out.