Curb appeal is often cited as the most crucial item to get right when selling your home. You’ve got to have good curb appeal to give buyers a positive first impression, and the photos have got to back it up. Depending on what improvements you’ve done and when you’ve done them, internet-savvy buyers may now get to look at the ‘before picture’ too.
On March 27th, Google added Austin, TX to it’s list of cities available for ‘street view‘. What does this mean? It means that you can now see 360 degree panoramic views of the streets of Austin. When searching for an address in Austin using maps.google.com you can now click on ’street view’ to see a scrollable photo of the area.

Austin Real Estate Virtual Tour

How do google do that? They drive a specially equipped car around a city taking photos. The car has eight panoramic cameras on the roof, and the photos are tied to existing street data.

If you’re buying a house, this gives point in time information about how the houses you are looking at might have once appeared. It allows buyers to see curb appeal (or the lack of it) from the past!

Say that you paint your house, do some front landscaping, and put on a new roof in April 2008 for an early summer sale. Google may have taken photographs in December 2007, which show your house as it was before the improvements, and this might be what someone who looks around your neighbourhood using google will see. This makes it even more crucial to use a Realtor® who uses a professional photographer to get the very best photos of your home possible.