🎭🏘️ Real estate listings are marketing… not truth.
It’s easy to forget this when you’re scrolling photos and thinking, “Wow, this is a solid property.” Clean finishes, good angles, nice lighting. Your brain starts selling the deal to you before the numbers ever show up. That’s the danger. 🧠 We’re emotional. 💼 Investing has to be logical. When you’re evaluating a deal, you’re not buying kitchens, counters, or curb appeal. You’re buying monthly cash flow. Everything else is just packaging. 📸 And packaging lies sometimes. Photos get staged, edited, cropped, or flat-out manipulated to make a deal appear better than it actually is. It’s the same reason restaurants obsess over food presentation 🍽️ It influences perception before substance. 🚦So slow down. 📊 Look for the NOI first. If the income doesn’t work, the deal stops there. 👇 Check out the images below. We noticed something felt “off” about the counter and moved on. Turns out it wasn’t a "renovation"… it was sloppy Photoshop 😅 Takeaway: Trust the numbers before you trust the photos.