And the clients of the bad one’s must simply not know. But not always. As a real estate photographer I have received a couple of calls from clients who were not happy with their realtor’s photos of their property and paid for the photography out of their own pocket. Now, I would think that would be an embarrassment to the realtor.

The point you make here though about conveying quality is important. I’m frequently shocked by the lack of quality shown in listings with respect to photos, comments, data input, and more. If so many agents are using digital photography then why aren’t they learning how to use them more effectively? Have they somehow missed the memo that photos are what gets prospective buyers to go look at a home in person? That listings with more than 6 photos have more hits than those without or with only 1 or 2? It’s a shame that clients let the agents get away with it. Most all of the materials we put out to help with advertising a client’s listing get run by the client first to make sure they approve of the quality of the work and that there are no mistakes or clerical errors about the data.

For our own upgrade in quality services we’re rolling a out a new listing service program that we’ve cultivated over the past year and I’m excited to see how it goes once we go full force. In 2006 it helped us gain around $4 million in new listing business and client feedback has been tremendous. So far all the professionals I’ve worked with have told us that they know of no one that does as much as we do to show value for our service fees and that makes me feel pretty good.