Anyone who hasn’t spent much time in real estate might imagine that photos of homes are the most harmless, easy-to-use images available. That’s … definitely not the case and hasn’t been for some time, and when you stop to think about it, it makes perfect sense that not everyone would want pictures of their private space plastered online or elsewhere.
But it might leave you in a bind as a real estate agent with marketing materials to create because those materials require images, and ideally high-quality ones. And it’s not just photos of homes or listing photos that are tied up in licensing minutiae—you could get slapped with a “cease and desist” and fined if you improperly use a landscape photo! If you’re not going to take the pictures yourself, then that means you need to get at least somewhat savvy about what you can and can’t use from different websites, and how to tell whether an image is usable for you.
Of course, the best route is to work with a service or vendor that handles this legal wrangle for you because they do exist, they make it really easy, and (we have to say it!) this article shouldn’t be considered legal advice, so you should talk to your broker or a creative rights lawyer if you have nuanced questions. But hopefully it will start to point you in the right direction.