Just before Christmas, my husband and I received one of the best presents we’ve ever gotten: we sold our house in Washington. It had been on the market for almost nine months, and all through the fall as the economic picture and predictions grew steadily worse, we really worried about how much longer it would take to sell and whether we’d get a decent price for it. It was a beautiful home in a great community, though, so thankfully a family that really appreciated what it had to offer came along, and everyone is happy! For the last few weeks, Harry and I have been been visiting a lot of homes within a radius of about 20 miles of his new workplace. We’re ready to move out of our temporary home of a small two-bedroom apartment, get our stuff out of storage and (for me at least) own some dirt that I can plant a garden in. One of the great things about house hunting these days (aside from the interest rates and buyers’ market) is the fact that one can do so much screening in advance online. Even just 15 years ago, far fewer homes were available for viewing this way, and the information and pictures were often limited and haphazardly organized. (And if your Internet connection was slow, well, the whole process was just too frustrating.) These days, though, virtually every listing out there can be found in moments with just a few mouse clicks. That means that we’ve actually been looking at houses for more like the last two months. Hop on to any of the major realtors’ Web sites, select your parameters (house and lot square footage, age of the home, number of bedrooms and baths, price range, location), click “Search,” and Bingo!, up comes a list of candidates, with handy maps, links to neighborhood and school information, and even “virtual tours” of your options. Even our daughters have gotten in on the act from Chicago, searching when job hunting or studying grew tiresome and sending us links to places they like (“Hey, this one has a pool!” “Do you think that big-screen TV comes with the house?”). Now, of course we dutifully read through the descriptions, note the amenities, days on the market, annual taxes and the like. But we most avidly check out the photos, and we have become quite adept at guessing at floor plans, room sizes and quality of a place based on just a few of these. Pictures ARE worth a thousand words, and someone could probably make a lot of money developing a class for agents on how to take good pictures and put together an appealing assortment for these online listings. I’m pretty sure, based on firsthand research, that if someone HAS created such a course, not enough agents are taking it.   I’m immediately suspicious if there are more photos of those “amazing views” or “stunning landscaping” than there are of the house itself. I’m even more suspicious if there are only a few pictures; and when the quality is poor or the shots unflattering, I think that reflects on the quality of the listing agent as well. I saw one shot of what was probably a pretty decent master bathroom, but I couldn’t get past all of the bottles of bath products lined up on the counter and the curling iron plugged in to the wall. It looked like the agent had come in while the owner was getting ready for work, said “Don’t mind me, I’ll be done in a flash,” and snapped a few photos. I know owners are encouraged to reduce clutter and excess furniture and mess before listing a house, but it seems some of the pictures have been taken before such editing occurred–if it ever did. In other cases, one might guess that they are trying to sell the furniture instead of the home it sits in, because that nifty sofa or desk fills the whole frame while giving you no sense of the size of the room around it or the placement of windows and doors.  And someone really needs to point out that pictures taken on a bright, sunny day are often overexposed and feature strong bars of light cutting through a room, which make it impossible to see what lies in the shadows around them. Such flawed presentations of such expensive products usually leave me unimpressed and clicking on the next home without putting the poorly offered ones on my list of “to see.” On the other hand, nicely composed shots of neat, evenly lit spaces that allow me to see how the rooms relate to each other will get me itching to actually visit the house and see how I’d fit in it. We’re gradually narrowing our search, but I think that even after we find our next home, I’ll periodically return to a little online house hunting, just to see what’s out there (especially well above my “real” price range). And every time I see some hastily thrown together photo display, I’ll think, “Now, someone should create a class for  these guys . . .” Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader