Real estate professionals across the U.S. have upped their spending, and are now investing more cash in marketing their listings than they were before the pandemic. The highest priority for most real estate agents is to ensure they have good photos of the homes they list.

Even so, the willingness to spend money by agents differs by region. In some parts of the U.S., real estate pros are putting greater emphasis on photography. In the West, Northeast and Midwest for example, agents are spending more on listing photography services than they did prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study by HomeJab, a company that provides real estate pros with access to on-demand professional photo, aerial, 3D virtual tours and other services of that kind.

HomeJab’s study shows that agents in the West are spending 9% more on photography services than they did before the pandemic commenced. Agents in the Northeast have upped their photography spending by 7.5%, and in the Midwest, by 5.6%.

However, the trend has been in the opposite direction in the Southwest and Southeast, HomeJab found. Agents in those regions are spending only slightly more, or slightly less, on professional real estate photography than they were prior to 2021.

HomeJab’s study was quite comprehensive and involved 43,000 real estate photography assignments carried out between 2017 and 2021 in all five major regions of the U.S.

The study found that orders for services in the real estate listing photography industry have risen overall since the pandemic began. It found that agents spend an average of $229 on photography for each listing.

Real estate pros in the West spend the most, with their average photography costs coming to $279 per listing order. The map below breaks down the average real estate agent's photography expenses by state:

The results of the study would suggest that agents are generating more income from the pandemic-related boom in the real estate market, hence they have higher budgets for their marketing efforts.

“Professional real estate listing photography orders by real estate agents clearly remained a vital marketing investment in many of the hottest markets during the COVID-19 outbreak,” said Joe Jesuele, founder and CEO of HomeJab. “Our research shows that during a time when homes were flying off the shelves, and multiple offers hit a new high, agents still understood the power of visual images for their real estate marketing.”