The assumption that better media shortens days on market may be circular
Most of the evidence for professional photography reducing time on market comes from studies where the photographer, the brokerage, or the media company ran the numbers. That does not make the finding wrong, but it does make the methodology worth asking about before you build a pricing argument on it. The confound nobody mentions is that listings with professional media also tend to be priced more carefully, staged more thoroughly, and listed by agents with stronger buyer networks. Separating the photo from everything else that correlates with it is harder than the before-and-after DOM comparisons suggest. A property that sold in eight days with a Matterport scan and a drone package may have sold in ten days with phone photos, or it may have sold in eight days regardless because the price was sharp and the location was right. The scan did not run the counterfactual. I am not arguing that media quality is irrelevant, because presentation clearly moves buyers from passive to active interest, and active interest gets showings scheduled. What I am less convinced of is that any particular media tier produces a measurable and consistent DOM reduction that holds across price points, markets, and seasons once you control for pricing accuracy. The tighter question is whether professional media raises the offer price rather than shortening the timeline, because a buyer who would have offered the same number three weeks later is a different kind of win than a buyer who pays more because the listing looked credible enough to justify it. Which of those two effects, if either, have you actually seen evidence for in your own market?
