Let’s be honest: most buyers are swiping through Zillow on their phones, scrolling past dozens of listings in minutes. If your property photos don’t immediately grab their attention in that feed, you’ve already lost the showing. But here’s what many agents don’t realize—the beautiful photos your photographer delivered aren’t actually what buyers see when they’re browsing.
The Zillow Cropping Issue You Need to Know About
When potential buyers scroll through listings on Zillow, they’re not seeing your full images. As you can see in the example above, Zillow automatically crops portions of your photos—both the top and bottom sections—in the main browsing view. These are what we call “dead zones.”
Buyers only see the full, uncropped image after they click through to your individual listing. And here’s the critical problem: if your photographer doesn’t compose with these dead zones in mind, the house itself gets cropped. You end up with listing photos where:
- The roof is cut off
- The property appears uncomfortably zoomed in
- The image feels claustrophobic and lacks context
- The overall composition just looks “off” or incomplete
When buyers see these awkward, cropped images while scrolling, they don’t stop to click. They keep swiping. Your listing doesn’t get the showing it deserves, and all because of a technical issue that’s completely avoidable.
Why This Destroys Your Click-Through Rate
Your click-through rate (CTR) is everything in online real estate marketing. It doesn’t matter how stunning the full-resolution image is if buyers never click to see it. The cropped version they see while browsing is your only chance to make a first impression, and if that version shows an incomplete house or lacks proper context, you’ve lost them.
Think about it from the buyer’s perspective: they’re comparing your listing to dozens of others. When your photo appears zoomed in with the roof cut off while the competing listing down the street shows a complete, well-framed home, which one are they clicking on?
Related: Learn more about why first impressions matter when choosing your listing’s cover photo.
What You Need to Tell Your Photographer
When hiring a real estate photographer, make sure they understand platform-specific cropping, especially for Zillow and MLS portals. Here’s what proper composition for Zillow requires:
Leave breathing room. Your photographer needs to shoot wider than feels natural, leaving generous space above the roofline and below the foundation. The composition might look a bit “loose” with extra sky and lawn, but it will look perfect after Zillow’s automatic crop.
Keep the house centered. The entire structure should stay within the center 60-70% of the frame vertically. This ensures that even with aggressive cropping, the complete home remains visible and properly contextualized.
Check the edges. Before accepting your photo package, mentally crop off the top 25% and bottom 25% of each exterior shot. Does the house still look complete and appealing? If not, ask for recompositions.
Test before you list. If possible, have your photographer upload a test image or show you a preview of how it will display in Zillow’s browse view. This catches problems before your listing goes live.
Platform-Specific Guidelines
Different platforms crop and display images differently. Here’s what you should know:
Zillow & MLS Platforms: Assume 20-30% will be cropped from the top and bottom in browse view. The house must fit comfortably within the remaining space, or buyers will see an incomplete image.
Instagram Feed: Best at 4:5 ratio (portrait orientation). This captures more screen space on mobile than square images, which is where most of your audience is viewing. Check out our Instagram collaboration method for tips on maximizing your social media reach.
Instagram & Facebook Stories: Require 9:16 vertical format. These need to be composed and cropped specifically for the tall, narrow format.
Facebook Feed: Works well with 1:1 (square) or 4:5 (portrait). Different from Zillow’s requirements, so using the same image everywhere won’t give you optimal results.
The Real Cost of Getting This Wrong
When your listing photos aren’t optimized for how they’re actually displayed, you’re essentially sabotaging your own marketing. The consequences are tangible:
- Lower click-through rates mean fewer potential buyers viewing your full listing
- Fewer views mean fewer showings
- Fewer showings mean longer days on market
- Longer days on market can lead to price reductions
All of this from a composition issue that could have been avoided by shooting with platform cropping in mind.
Questions to Ask Your Photographer
Not all real estate photographers understand the technical requirements of online platforms. Here are the questions you should ask:
- “Do you compose specifically for Zillow’s cropping in browse view?”
- “Can you show me examples of how your images display in the Zillow feed, not just the full-size versions?”
- “Do you provide platform-specific crops for MLS, social media, and other marketing channels?”
- “Can you preview how images will look before we finalize them?”
If your photographer can’t confidently answer these questions, they may not be optimizing your listing photos for maximum performance.
The Bottom Line
In today’s market, the vast majority of buyers start their search online, and most of them are scrolling through Zillow on their phones. Your listing photos need to be composed not just to look beautiful, but to display correctly on the platforms where buyers are actually searching.
A professionally shot photo that’s improperly composed for Zillow will underperform compared to a strategically framed image that accounts for the platform’s cropping. The goal isn’t just pretty pictures—it’s pictures that drive clicks, generate showings, and ultimately sell homes faster.
At Higley’s Media Group, we specialize in real estate photography that’s optimized for how buyers actually view listings online. We compose every shot with Zillow’s browse view in mind, ensuring your properties look complete, appealing, and properly contextualized where it matters most—in that critical first impression that drives the click.
Want listing photos that perform as well as they look? Book your professional photography session for real estate photography optimized for today’s digital platforms.
