Need real estate stock photos for your blog, website, or marketing materials? We’ve got you covered! There are plenty of sites online offering real estate stock photos, and we’ve rounded up 8 of the best. Even better: 4 of those 8 sites offer stock photos for free!
Let’s look at those first…
Where to Get Real Estate Stock Photos for FREE
You can get quality real estate stock photos online for free. You just have to know where to look. Our top picks for free stock real estate stock photos are Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash, and Kaboompics.
1. Pexels
Pexels offers nearly 300 real estate related stock photos. The images are professional, high-quality, and a perfect fit for your real estate blog, website, or marketing materials. The big downside (and this is true of most free stock photo sites) is that these same images are used by so many real estate professionals. How many times have you seen that house in the top right corner? If you haven’t noticed it on real estate blogs yet, watch for it…you’ll see it everywhere!
2. Pixabay
Pixabay offers many of the exact same photos as Pexels (look, that same house is in the top left and again in the middle row!), but you’ll also find lots of additional images since Pixabay currently offers over 900 real estate stock photos.
They also currently offer 4 free real estate videos, but the quality of those videos isn’t high enough to represent your real estate brand. For videos, stick with a premium stock photo provider (like numbers 5-8 coming up on our list!).
3. Unsplash
What we love about Unsplash is that fewer people seem to know about it, so you don’t have every other active agent using the same photos. Although, naturally, there are so photos available on Unsplash that can also be found on Pexels and Pixabay. With these free services, the photographers typically don’t offer exclusive licenses to just one site, so the same photo might be included on all three sites we discussed so far.
Having said that, many of Unsplash’s 550 real estate stock photos seem to be unique to the site. And you’ll find some beautiful images there.
4. Kaboompics
Kaboompics is the odd-man-out on our free real estate stock photos list. Just looking at these images, you can see the difference immediately. Kaboompics is more lifestyle photos than generic stock photos. All the photos are taken by Karolina (founder of Kaboompics), so they all have a cohesive feel. You won’t find any photos if you search for “real estate”, but when you search for “home” or “interior”, you’ll find highly stylized, unique images.
You can build a beautiful, branded real estate blog around Kaboompics images. Instead of showing homeowners accepting keys, use Kaboompics to show people enjoying their “new home” (breakfast in bed, grilling out, or dogs playing in the yard). This stock photos create a mood and instantly give your real estate blog a little artistry.
Where to Get Premium Real Estate Stock Photos
If you have the budget, you may want to invest in some premium real estate stock photos. You’ll have many more photos to choose from, so you’ll be able to control your branding better through premium images. With so many options available through premium providers, your website, blog, and evergreen marketing materials won’t look like every other real estate agents!
Plus, premium stock photo sites also offer stock footage videos. If you want your website to come alive with video, it’s worth spending the money on quality stock footage.
Adobe, Shutterstock, Dreamstime, and 123RF are our top picks for premium real estate stock photos and videos.
Let’s take a closer look at each of them…
5. Adobe
Adobe is a trusted name in tech design, and their stock photos are top-notch.
In addition to photos, Adobe provides illustrations, vectors, and even video! And their filters are super helpful. You can search specifically for images with space for your ad copy, panoramic images, and images with or without people as needed.
You have the option to buy credit packs that you can use as needed, or you can subscribe for as little as $30/mo to get a better per-image deal.
But the real selling point for Adobe is the free trial. You can give it a try for 30 days before committing.
Adobe currently has 844,656 images and 38,999 videos relating to real estate!
6. Shutterstock
Shutterstock is neck-in-neck with Adobe in terms of quality and pricing. You have the same credit and subscription packages at the same price points. What you don’t have is the free trial that you can get with Adobe. The good news is that you can always purchase a few credits and test the images and service without committing to Shutterstock or investing much money in trying them out.
7. Dreamstime
Dreamstime is a newer addition to the stock photo game. They don’t quite have the selection of Adobe and Shutterstock. And the quality is perhaps a little lower in general. But so are the prices. And they do offer a free one week trial.
8. 123RF
123 RF might be the best value for agents just getting started with premium stock photos. The offer higher quality images than Dreamstime at a lower price point than Adobe and Shutterstock. Plus, not many people are familiar with 123RF, so you’ll probably be the only agent in your local market with these images.
The downside is that 123RF doesn’t offer as large a selection. But new images are added every day, so this may not be much of a problem.
Make Some Money Selling Your Own Stock Photos
By the way, if you’re looking at some of these real estate stock photos and thinking to yourself psht, I can take photos myself that are just as good, maybe you should do that!
I don’t typically recommend agents use all their own photos for their blogs because it’s just too time-consuming to stage a full photo shoot every week for your new blog post. But if this is something you enjoy during your free time, maybe you should turn your photos into a passive income stream! You can be one of the photographers with your images on Adobe, Shutterstock, Dreamstime, and 123RF. And every time someone downloads one of your photos, you’ll get a (tiny) commission.
Read all about it in How to Make Money Selling Stock Photos.
The Bottom Line
You don’t have to spend a lot (or even any!) money to get professional real estate stock photos on your blog, website, or marketing materials.
But if you want to stand out in your market, it pays to invest in top-quality images and videos.
