Every time I am apartment hunting, photos look like blurry snaps off a flip phone from 2001. Or it will be a dark, gloomy photo of a kitchen counter. Was in a meeting about real estate earlier, and the question came up and everyone had the same experience. My brother is also a real estate photographer in America. Is this not a thing in Japan?
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I’ve noticed typically the shittier/cheaper the apartment, the shittier the photos. Blurry, dark, weirdly zoomed in on random objects.
I assume they either can’t be bothered because it’s such a shit apartment so they don’t spend time on it, they know trying to take super crisp, professional photos of some dilapidated shithole would just be like putting lipstick on a pig, or they specifically try to make the photos as shitty and low quality as possible so it is harder to tell how bad it actually looks irl and they can maybe dupe some people.
When I was looking for houses online I’d say the majority had decent pics.
We just recently got a new apartment and I’d say most were pretty well lit and clean and looked like they would elsewhere in the world if you looked at apartments.
I’ve seen it even in expensive places. My favorite scenario is not a photo at all, but when they post the floor plan and it’s just an extremely blurry copy of the blueprint which is just a jumbled mess of lines and you can’t even tell where the walls or doors are.
Lol I was just talking about this the other day. I especially like the ones that have 16 photos but 3 are of the bathroom and genkan and the rest are the konbinis/pharmacies around the place.
It does make it slightly easier to find apartments though: I automatically drop any listings with crappy photos. I figure if they don’t care about the place why should I?
My favorite is the terrible photoshopping, random fish eye lens and color correction. Not a single power line or neighboring building to be seen? Brown grass, grey sky and neon green cut ‘n paste trees? Not one, not two, but three separate shots of the same closet? The bathroom vanity ghost?
I imagine they’re just asking Taro I’ve-never-owned-a-computer the new hire to do all this stuff.
>My brother is also a real estate photographer in America. Is this not a thing in Japan?
It is, I’ve met people who do it. I think it largely depends on who manages the property and how much it’s worth. In my experience, the higher the rent, the better the photos (excepting properties that are only expensive because they’re central but otherwise they’re crap). Same thing in my home country, if you’re lucky enough to find something with any images at all.
Because many commercials are :
– not “technical enough” to make good pictures, or even use the wide angle lens of their smartphone.
– not smart enough to recognise they’d need a professional do it for them
– too old-fashioned and want you to meet them, and think having a meetup will make you believe their bullshit
That’s a problem in most countries, but if you add the shitty average website in Japan with 200*300 pictures and 20 yo user experience, you emphasise the struggle.
I asked a realtor about this. They said that it comes down to lots of people actually not wanting too many images of their places online out of privacy issues.
If that makes no sense to you, you’re not alone. Imagine wanting to rent or sell a property, but not wanting people to be able to view it. Maybe it’s a not-trusting-the-internet thing or whatever, but that’s what it is.
Like 2/3 of all properties don’t even get listed on the websites for the very same reason. So if you’re hunting for a place, you’re much better off going to an agent for help rather than browsing online. You’ll see a lot more stuff that normally you wouldn’t see, and the agents are really there to help you find stuff that matches your needs.
Don’t forget about the mid-2000s site design where the photos show up in some javascript window that is non-resizable so you can’t enlarge it enough to see the poor resolution in the first place.
I think the reason this happens is that for most places they’re content (i.e. can still find a renter) just with poor, underlit, low-res photos taken by the real-estate agent’s 10 year old digicam.
Oh not only this but the websites restrict the pictures to tiny sizes even when the actual pictures are larger. When I was looking for an apartment I wrote my own script to slightly modernise the summo site and make it usable, including far larger pics.
But as for you question, no, there is no reason and no excuse.
Comes from the Japanese philosophy of ” it’s good enough”. just look at any sign written in English and you’ll know what I mean.
The fact people can get away with mass producing signage with Engrish on them should be a crime.
So, this is PURE speculation, but there’s the weird thing in Japan where many apartments have a landlord and a real estate company. The company is usually real professional and the landlord is usually some old fart who just collects money and maybe does a walkthrough when you move out.
But after all the landlord actually owns the building while the company is just a middleman, so they may not have the right to take their own pictures and when asking the landlord about it he just sends the random pictures he took with his flip phone.
Because someone is going to rent it anyway, so why bother
My tin-foil thought is that it started back in the day as the best photos a galakei/1MP digicam/pinhole camera could produce, but is now used as a way to disguise places that are just not photogenic. It forces you to actually go and see the property, which perhaps might tip the scales for someone who are desperate enough (but may have declined if they saw photos online to start with).
Much like someone may swipe left on a Tinder photo, but may not have been so picky in real life.
My pet peeve is they go and use like a super wide angle lens that stretches the edges of the photos and pushes the center of the image far back to give this sense of depth but then you turn up, and can barely fit in a sofa.
A lot of real estate agencies now have tiktoks and instagrams where they do apartment tours
I am assuming that the websites like suumo don’t have video support yet so they can’t upload those videos to the site
I noticed the same thing when looking at cars online. Low res pics with little detail. Probably to hide scratches and such. Shady shit.
I too experienced that a while ago when I was searching for places, no matter what the price range was. I just went in person to the real estate agency and asked me to show the places so that I could see the nearby area and the apartment, and I don’t end up rejecting something good due to unappealing photos. I know it should be step after seeing something online, but I think I went for it to understand better what I’m looking for.
As a real estate agent I list houses and apartments for sale and rent in the Greater Tokyo area. Properties move so fast here in Tokyo that we don’t have time to make a perfect listing for them. We usually put up a provisional listing with the photos and information we have, then immediately get dozens of requests to view it.
If the first or second weekend of viewings does not result in an application or offer, then we will sit down and add more detail to the listing.
The companies that always have carefully crafted websites full of professional photographs are either (1) selling something to foreigners for far above the market price. (They can afford to wait a long time for a tenant). Or, (2) posting and leaving up a few old listings on their websites in order to get inquiries. If you contact them about an especially good place, with top class photos, they will likely tell you that it is already taken and try to divert you to something similar, but not quite as good. That is why it is good to go directly to an agency to get the real time availability.
Psychologically there is a reason why fewer photos are better. Most people have unrealistic criteria in mind when they look for a place. As soon as they see something in a listing that contradicts their conditions, they reject that place without hesitation. It could be the best overall apartment available for them, but one strike is enough to knock it out of competition.
If the information online is incomplete, you may not be able to check certain things about the listing until you view it in person. When people actually see an apartment in person and imagine living there, they will usually overlook some detail that doesn’t fit their ideal.
I’m guessing it’s because depending on the person, they’re just bad at taking pictures. And also bad at judging what’s worth putting in the ad and what isn’t.
I’m currently looking at apartments and I’ve seen one two days ago with a photo of the bathroom in an outright disgusting state.
And then of course others that have a nondescript picture of the balcony floor, and seven pictures of nearby conbinis.
I’m sorry but the mailboxes room and a picture of the Aeon next door is way more important than a second angle on the room I’ll spend 50% of my life in.
The quality of pics shocked me as well because as opposed to back home, this is the only place where I’ve seen people rent apartments without even visiting them before. I guess as long as there’s a plan, people don’t really care that much.
Either they’re trying to hide a shitty apartment behind shitty pictures, or they’re using legacy system that only allows them low resolution pictures.
Hiring a pro photographer who has a real camera and multiple flashes may show more than the realtor or owner would like to show (although they could manipulate the photos before posting) and would cost money.
The thing is that for an in demand place, more and better photos could help drive the price up. That’s true for online car auctions- more and better photos usually gets a better price.
Because old people run everything and they all have company flip phones.
Our apartment was a absolute surprise. We needed a place that was top floor (preferably an end unit), available on-site parking, allows cats, allows foreigners, within reasonable commuting distance from husband’s work.
We’d exhausted all our other options and this one was the last resort. It had been empty for who knows how long and the photos didn’t do it any justice. The photos looked positively ancient.
We decide to give it a try since it at least had a layout we were looking for. Get here and it’s nothing like the photos at all lol (they updated A LOT). And the place was dirt cheap.
Can’t judge a book by its cover with real estate here I suppose.
Seriously, overseas you will get a beautifully produced walkthrough video with the estate agent detailing the appeal points, here you get a floor plan and a few dank photos taken with a potato.
I really don’t know why no estate company has tried to polish their presentation…probably because they sell regardless, but jeez…
I just hated when there were no photos at all, just a shitty plan.
I think its because a lot of these places are listed when there are still inhabitants, so they cant get photos(or the agent has not gotten time to visit a place yet). Also multiple agents will often be listing a house(depending on the type of contract with the owner it can be exclusive or not), and probably won’t share photos.
Photos may be lost if the management company has changed.
Sometimes photos are also taken from when the place was originally built and they do not reflect the current state.
The race between multiple agents to rent a place first(and thus get info put early) results in this. Additionally a lot of buyers will sometimes rent unseen when all they care about is location and price.
Finally, some agents are just lazy
For less expensive places, the agents take the photos with their smartphones, and most have no idea how to take a good photo. (And even today, many non-flagship smartphones have **really** crappy cameras.)
also what is the deal with all the, clean? I guess you’d call it? but really low res pictures of stuff? where the lighting is good, but it’s a low res pic and sized appropriately to that res when it doesn’t need to be?
you see a picture of something and it was clearly professionally done…but find yourself squinting 10cm from the screen trying to see what’s there.
I bet a lot of it has to do with how most real estate agents are small offices with a few people who do a lot of different jobs. I have to figure that there are very few offices that can rush out immediately for that perfect hour when the sun shines directly into the unit they’re trying to rent. And the staff at these agencies are doing well to keep up with what properties are on the market and what relevant laws are in play – learning how to transport, assemble, and get the most out of a lighting rig on top of all that is a bit much.
Also, a lot of Kanto rabbit hutches I’ve lived in are just too small to get a good photo out of unless you have a wide angle lens.
Also probably that the homeowner asks the real estate agency to take care of everything, then the agency puts their fresh out of college clueless grunts to take the photos with some 90s digital camera since they don’t want to spend anything that would cut into their margin.
It’s kinda the opposite of Yahoo Auctions where they sometimes post close up pictures of every single scratch.
I feel like generally if you know price/location/type of building/age/sq m/tatami rooms or no you can usually already guess how it looks. E.g. The textured wallpaper and vinyl fake wood “cushion flooring” in just about every cheap apartment…
Also for stuff like small apartments in convenient locations I imagine people usually only need somewhere to sleep and hold their stuff anyway so probably aesthetic is least on the list of priorities?
Because apartments are commoditised and people care more about availability of convenience stores and the distance to the station than any such things as the look and feel of a place. Why care about a view from the window when you’re not planning to open the curtain, ever?
Because most companies are too lazy to hire a good pro photog. Not all as I was shooting a lot in Okinawa but many places just don’t want to pay for quality work.
Because they’re still mainly analogue.
Recently bought a house–while house hunting we looked at hundreds of listings. More often than not, what is posted online is only a fraction of what they have on hand when you go visit them in person. It was amazing being handed glossy color photos, elaborate floor plans, disaster maps etc. at the fudousan, while none of these things were available online.
Honestly, for older companies, likely they simply haven’t yet fully adopted and streamlined their web presence yet. They have a workflow that was developed decades ago and they haven’t had the paradigmn shift to digital fully take effect yet.
I did find one place that was doing crazy drones videos on youtube of some of their listings though… which was kind of interesting.
But minimini has 360 walk around of the facility which is quite good. Suumo and iiheya still have the thumbnail size pictures of the house and 6 pictures of nearby stores.
Must be several things at once:
-All those photos must have been made many years ago and not changed since then.
-Companies are run by jijis (or middle aged who inherited a jiji-like way of thinking) so no changes are ever made. Japan’s web/software development is stuck in Showa era. I’m surprised those real estate web sites are actually not web 1.0
-Japan just recently started switching from crappy garake flip phones to smartphones to be able go take proper photos. When I first came to Japan many Google reviews of different places still had tons of photos like if they were taken in 2001.
-Updating all the databases with new photos would require time/money, which means risks. Japan doesn’t do risks, and locals would gaman swallowing bad photos without complaining anyway, so why even bother.
TLDR: “but that’s how we’ve been doing it for many years”
on the flipside, though, the few that do have decent pics are always taken with a wide angle lens, and after seeing a few in person, it seems like the photographer held the camera as far in a corner as possible (so the pic makes it look huge compared to reality) lol
“No the apartment isn’t old, gloomy and grotty… it’s just a bad photo…”
Are you not allowed to tour the place? Or is that only allowed for apartments that you’ve chosen/paid the deposit fee for?
[ haven’t been to Japan, but planning on moving there next year for a 2 year stay]
Most people don’t use the Internet to find real estate in Japan.
Japanese real estate as a whole isn’t anywhere even as organized as the US.
It’s also definitely also still Japanese hate the Internet and love “privacy”. I hoped that COVID-19 was going to help this along, but it didn’t. But hey I can use Suica 100x more places now. You win some, you lose some and I own my house. 🙂
.. and yet quality pictures of the car park entrance?!
Probably because they’ve been renting out the same places for the last 15-20 years and those photos were literally taken with a flip phone circa 2002.
Basically they have 850,000 apartments for rent and a legacy database of awful photos that no one has time/inclination to update.
Newer apartments will at the very least have some decent smartphone photos, some will even have professional photos but those are reserved for the big name Mansion brands usually.
I assume, from a technical standpoint, the reason why most Japanese websites are bad: sheer lack of good training and practices stuck in web 1.0 thinking and design.
From a business standpoint, as others have noted, the places get rented so why bother taking decent photos?
As for me, no inside photos = don’t even consider.
What’s weird is that this is the same for people SELLING houses. Buy my house. No photos, no details. Sure, I’ll jump right on that.
Or when they post pictures of nearby combini and other stores. Why the fck would I want to see that when I’m checking out how apartment looks like?
i worked in Japanese real estate for 4 years, and while I am not sure weather it’s the law or not, taking photos with blitz wasn’t allowed. and sometimes u were asked to go and take pictures of a vacant house after dark, hence the quality. however it has wastly improved lately, but also depends on the apartment u are looking for if it’s old and scrappy chances are that they didn’t bother spending much time on it is high