I don't really understand the lack of photos myself. There should be at least one of the outside. I know if I was trying to sell I'd post tons of pics.

There was a house in a neighborhood i liked that had one pic posted. It was an REO so I figured the inside must have been trashed for them not to post pics of the interior. I decided to check it out anyway. To my surprise, the home was almost like new , well taken care of and had features that I hadn't seen in all the REOs I'd been browsing. The cleanest REO I'd ever seen.

I ended up buying the house but could never figure out why they didn't post more pics of the wonderful interior. On the flip side, I've seen the houses with the mint green walls have all sorts of pics posted.

I would definitely check out the REOs without photos.  The assumption is that it must be terrible because there are no photos, so you may luck out like Usugrow and end up with a property that's great and others have overlooked.

From a sellers perspective, they must be extremely lazy.

I don't get it either.  But I read somewhere (could have been here, I forget), that you can use that to your advantage.  No pictures, or dreadful pictures doesn't mean that it's actually bad.  But that lack does mean that a lot of people aren't going to bother with it, which means it's not going to get as many offers, and you're in with a better chance. 

Sounds like that's what you did.   Congratulations!

I concur, I don't bother paying attention to the homes with no pics. Any smart listing agent is going to make sure there are pics if they want to off load the property. If I was the seller, I would fire my realtor.

There can be another technical reason for not seeing photos, at least not right away.  Some MLSs send the information about a home in 2 seperate feeds.  One feed has all the information about a home, the other has the photos.  Oddly, the 2 feeds don't always get published at the same time. For example, the information feed may be published every 15 minutes but the photo feed only once per day.  Since Redfin wants to make sure that you get the information as quickly as possible, we will go ahead and show a listing even if there is no picture as soon as we get it so that you get it as fast as possible as well.

So if the home is newly listed and there is no picture, it may have a picture later that day or the next day.  If a home has no picture beyond that, that probably means the listing agent never submitted a picture.

Hope that helps.

John Kim

Product Manager

Often there are no pictures because:

1)  The home is being relisted and buyers would recognize it.  Agents want to get a "new listing" badge and a "1 day on the market" citation.

2)  The home is very ugly and pictures would only deter buyers.

3)  The agent and/or seller are inept.