Like any realtor, broker, and real estate agent knows, the real estate business is highly visual and real estate marketing requires high-quality, on-topic, and compelling photography to make the mark.
While you can obviously source images of each home for sale from the owners and listing agents, those are on the one hand not remotely enough to successfully promote your services, and on the other, usually not available to use for marketing purposes.
Why not enough? Because buyers need a lot more than just photos of the available houses to decide on going to see a property, and both them and sellers need a lot more than that to decide to use you as their agent. Factors like location, school district, closeness to downtown, neighborhood lifestyle are important for buyers. And they both need to know how professional and competent you are in your work.
Enter real estate stock photos, images of professional quality with a real estate concept, ready to download, and use commercially under a royalty-free license, including sharing them on social media.
Today we will tell you exactly where to find the best real estate pictures for licensing and the many ways you can use them to elevate your marketing game.
7 Best Sites to Buy Real Estate Stock Images
Let’s get straight to the point! Find a list of our 7 recommended stock photo agencies where you can buy all kinds of stock photos with real estate concept, with a flexible royalty-free license that is safe for commercial use and at very affordable prices.
These websites are also tech-advanced, where image searches are as easy as typing a keyword on a search bar and hit enter to summon thousands of similar images.
BONUS: Most of these agencies also offer stock videos, which are the up-and-coming media resource for marketing in all fields. In them, you can discover awesome aerial footage of beautiful properties!
Stock Photo Secrets Shop
Our very own Stock Photo Secrets Shop is ideal for independent real estate agents and small real estate firms, as it has professional stock images with ideal pricing options. For example, the 99club offer gives you 200 images downloads for one year for just $99, effectively solving your image needs for a whole year at a bargain price!
- Visit Stock Photo Secrets Shop
- Read Stock Photo Secrets Shop review
- Get the 99club offer
Photocase
Photocase is a German stock photo site that has a nice selection of real estate-themed photos with a more artistic, fun, and stereotype-free style. If this is your vibe, here you will find lots of photographic hidden gems.
- Visit Photocase
- Read Photocase review
- Grab the Photocase Coupon Code: 5 Free Credits + 10% Off
Shutterstock
Shutterstock is the king of commercial stock images and has the widest selection in every topic. If you are into commercial real estate and need lots of fresh new images all the time, a Shutterstock subscription would be a perfect match.
- Visit Shutterstock
- Read Shutterstock review
- Grab the Shutterstock Coupon Code: up to 15% Off
- Take the Shutterstock Free Trial: 10 Free Images for 30 Days
iStock
iStock is renowned for its rich catalog that has both budget images and high-end, exclusive photos available. If you want a commercial-styled but less widely used picture for your marketing campaign, this is where you can find it at affordable prices.
- Visit iStock
- Read iStock review
- Grab the iStock Promo Code: up to 15% Off
Adobe Stock
Adobe Stock is a stock photo service fully integrated into Photoshop and all the other Creative Cloud apps. It has high-resolution real estate pictures and is perfect if you like to work with Adobe tools for graphic design.
- Visit Adobe Stock
- Read Adobe Stock review
- Take the Adobe Stock Free Trial: 10 Free Images for 30 Days
Dreamstime
Dreamstime is a stock photo site that delivers great customer service and has many images with a real estate theme that you can buy with a subscription or with credit packs.
- Visit Dreamstime
- Read Dreamstime review
123RF
123RF offers great value stock photos with multiple buying options, including lots of real estate photos ready to be used in your marketing efforts.
- Visit 123RF
- Read 123RF review
- Grab the 123RF Coupon Code: up to 20% Off
4 Free Stock Photo Sites with Real Estate Images
If you’re the kind to love free stuff, you probably are already eyeing at these sites promising stock images for free. But you need to know that most of them can potentially get you in a lot of legal trouble!
As you know, real estate is mostly private property. Owners have a right to administrate who can use images of their property, and how. When it comes to photos, they have to sign a property release document where they authorize to have their property displayed.
Free photo sites often don’t police if such documents are signed and attached. So there is a considerable chance that the beautiful photo of a new house you downloaded from a free image site has not been properly cleared for commercial use and that you end up sued by the owner for wrongfully use. Not what you want when setting up a marketing graphic!
However, if you must use free images this time, we present you with a list of 4 reliable free stock photo sites where you are safer downloading and using real estate pictures. More trusted sites can be found in our huge list of the 27+ Best Free Stock Photo Sites.
PikWizard
PikWizard is a service owned by premium stock media production house WaveBreak Media. Most images come from their talented, professional photographers and are licensed for free under a custom contract.
Unsplash
Unsplash is a hugely popular photography community that offers images for free download. As the platform serves as a display window for beginner artists, the image quality is very good.
Pexels
Pexels is a site offering free images, a great number of them, with a custom free use license and including a search tool that makes it very easy to find the perfect photo.
Pixabay
Pixabay free photo site offers free images from user submissions that they care to review for quality and validity.
Why Use Stock Photos for Real Estate Marketing
The real estate market, with its highs and lows, is a very competitive space. As such, succeeding in it requires a lot more than just being a great agent or broker. To market your services or your firm properly you are going to need every weapon in your arsenal, from traditional resources like billboards, bench signs, and pens, to modern-day tools like social media, real estate websites, online ads, email newsletters and blogging.
Each one of these mediums demands compelling images –marketing is highly visual– that would cost a ton of money to produce from scratch by hiring a photographer. And stock photos are the perfect way to solve your image needs without breaking the bank or wasting time.
There will be exceptions, of course. When it comes to publishing new houses on the market and promote them, the owners and listing agents will provide photos of the properties (or they’ll hire you if you include photography services). But it’s very likely that they will not consent to you using images of their living rooms or close-ups of their moldings for your personal marketing purposes.
In stock photography, you will find authentic, modern, and beautiful imagery to tackle every aspect of business promotion: conceptual graphics to illustrate the key factors when buying, selling, or renting a new home, infographics with pro-tips for real estate investment, candid-looking photographs of friendly realtors and adorable young couples visiting an open house. Heck, you even have real estate icons and sale real estate signs available to download!
Royalty-free stock photography is a real goldmine for real estate professionals to craft appealing and effective visuals that result in more real estate leads and clients and ultimately more sales.
Have you used real estate stock photos? What style has been more useful for you? We’d love to know!
Image © Jakub Krechowicz – Fotolia.com
