Guess What's the Most Popular Day for Taking Real Estate Listing Photos?

Redfin says Thursday is the best day of the week to list a home for sale for speed and certainty. So does Zillow.

But what about the most popular day of the week for real estate photography? When do professional real estate photographers go out to shoot a new home listing?

You might guess Saturday or Sunday when most sellers are not working and are at home to give the photographer access. Except that you would be wrong.

At HomeJab, we just completed a new (free to download) study of real estate photography. For this study, we looked at nearly 60,000 real estate photography assignments placed by real estate agents between 2018 and 2021 on HomeJab.com. Since we have real estate photography professionals in every major US market and all 50 states, the data comes from throughout the US.

We discovered that Wednesday is the most popular day of the week to take photos of a new property listing. One in five – 20% – of every new listing is shot on a Wednesday.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are not far behind, tied for the second most popular day of the week for shooting real estate listing photos at 18% each.

And even though more sellers are readily available on weekends, that's not when photos of their home are being taken. Only one in ten photos are taken on a Saturday and Sunday. In fact, Sunday was the least popular day of the week, with just 4% of real estate listing photos shot.

Impact of COVID-19 on real estate photography

Our HomeJab photo study also looked at ways COVID-19 has had its fingerprints on real estate photography services. Looking at different trends, we discovered changes in the popularity of both video/3D shoots for new property listings and aerial footage orders.

In 2020, the pandemic shuttered almost all Open Houses. Almost immediately, the percentage of video and 3D virtual tours ordered by agents jumped significantly. 3D virtual tours jumped from 37% to 53% of all photo shoots for the year.

Then last year, as more Open Houses returned, the percentage of 3D virtual tours dropped a bit to 48% but remained higher than pre-pandemic levels for 2019.

Perhaps most surprising at first glance was our HomeJab research uncovered the opposite happened with aerial photography.

In 2018 and 2019, about 15% of real estate listing photo shoots included aerial photography. But in 2020, that number dropped to 12%. But then, last year, aerial photography orders rebounded to about 14% for all listings.

What happened?

After watching the patterns of agent photography habits over nearly a decade, agents typically have a fixed budget for photography. So when the pandemic hit, agents shifted their dollars towards tools to help remote buyers shop. Without Open Houses and fewer in-person home showings, a 3D tour was the best next thing.

So, an increase in one service, we believe, caused a decrease in the other service photography services agents were ordering. So, as a result, their spending that included aerial tours decreased.

Now that Open Houses have and showings are more common, we expect real estate agents using HomeJab will build in video and 3D tours as part of their 'go-to' photo package for all their listings. We also believe aerial photography will continue to rebound.

Why? Extensive industry research shows that increasing visual content satisfies sellers and helps potential buyers. And agents know that some sellers still don't want to allow as many people inside their houses as they once did. At least not yet.

Real estate photography is the mainstay of real estate marketing, and images help sell homes. Agents who want to put their best foot forward for their brand and have happier sellers will use professional real estate photography.

We hope they'll use HomeJab for their next listing and "wow" their sellers by placing an order for an affordable, high-quality package on-demand at homejab.com.

Joe Jesuele is the founder and CEO of HomeJab, America’s most popular and reliable on-demand professional real estate photography and video marketplace for real estate pros, delivering over 4,000,000 images to help agents sell and rent more than $35 billion in listings.