We're continuing an annual tradition of counting down our top 10 articles of the year. The following article was originally published back in March and is #2 in our countdown. See #3 here.
That house you sold in 2012 has just come back on the market. You know you still have a picture somewhere--there it is--and the home still looks pretty much the same. You upload the photo and relist the property.
No problem, right?
Well, actually, you could be stepping into some dangerous legal territory.
We spoke with Larry Lohrman, a real estate photographer and blogger in Salem, Oregon. He frequently writes about issues at the crossroads of real estate and photography. One of the most common topics of discussion on his blog is usage rights for photographs commissioned from professional photographers.
"I have a friend who's an agent and photographer in Seattle," he says. After a conversation about just this subject, Lohrman's friend went back to his office of more than 80 agents and asked around. "Down to a person, no one" -- not the managing broker, not a single agent -- "understood that when the agents pay a photographer for photos, they aren't getting ownership of the photos. They're only licensing those photos for a specific time and purpose."
A number of recent high-profile cases have brought this issue to light, and may be cause for concern if you're not 100% sure of the legal status of your listing images: