How to find old listing photos of a house

Where old listing photos come from

Almost every listing photo you see on a portal started in the MLS. Zillow's help center says "a majority of Zillow's photos are provided by real estate agents through the MLS via a listing feed when a home is listed for sale," and Redfin says it has agreements with MLS systems that provide listing and photo information. When the home sells, the photos stay in the MLS. Redfin puts it plainly: "When a home is sold through the MLS, the photos are still archived in the MLS system," and the feeds keep sending them unless they are hidden or removed at the source.

So there are three places an old photo can still be: a portal that kept it after the sale, the MLS itself, and an archive that copied the page while the home was for sale. The rest of this guide goes through each, in the order most likely to work.

On Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com and Homes.com

Search the full street address. Zillow notes that property pages for homes that are not for sale, for rent or recently sold "can only be searched by entering the full address," so a map search may not show them.

Redfin's Sale and Tax History section lists every past sale it has for the address, which tells you when the home was listed and which year's photos to look for. Redfin also says removed photos can stay in Google and Bing image results for a while, because the search engines take time to re-read the page; an image search for the address sometimes turns up a photo the portal no longer shows.

Through an agent: the MLS

The most complete set of old photos is usually in the MLS, and only members (agents and brokers) can log in. Many MLSs keep a closed listing exactly as it was. SmartMLS, for example, says that when a listing reaches its final off-market status (Closed, Expired or Canceled), "all data (including photos, supplements and virtual tours) is part of the permanent record" and "none of it can be removed or adjusted," not even by its own staff.

SmartMLS gives the reasons, and they explain why an agent can usually help: the photos are used to pick comparable sales for a CMA, and to track what was improved in a home since it was last listed. Rules differ by MLS, so ask an agent in the area where the home is. Give them the address and the approximate year it was listed.

Archives: the Wayback Machine

The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine stores copies of web pages over time. Its help page says you search by URL and can narrow the search to a date range; it has no full-text search, so you need the old listing's address, not the house's street address. Paste the URL of the portal page (the address you see in the browser bar on Zillow, Redfin or Realtor.com) and pick a date from the calendar.

• Many pages were never captured. The Archive says sites may be missing because its crawlers "were unaware of their existence at the time of the crawl," or because a site blocked them or asked to be excluded.
• Images often break. The Archive explains that a broken image usually means the image itself was never archived. Paste the image's own URL into the search box to check.
• Try the listing agent's site too. If the agent or brokerage had its own page for the home, paste that URL as well; any page the crawlers found can be in the archive.

County records: what they have and what they don't

County assessor and recorder offices hold the sale dates, sale prices, tax assessments and basic facts such as beds, baths and square footage. Redfin says its Public Facts come from a third party that gets them "directly from the local county assessor and recorder offices," and Zillow says its tax data comes from public county records while its price history comes from MLS feeds. That makes county records the place to confirm when a home sold, but they are not where listing photos are kept; those come from the MLS.

Why old listing photos disappear

• The owner hid them. Zillow and Redfin both let a verified owner hide the listing photos. Redfin then shows a Google Street View image, and keeps the first photo unless the owner asks support to remove it too. Zillow offers some recently sold homes an option to hide all but the primary photo. Step by step in our guide to removing or updating listing photos.
• The listing was withdrawn, not sold. Redfin removes the listing photos, price and description when a home is delisted from the MLS.
• The portal shows less after a sale. Zillow says aerial or Google Maps images are displayed for most past sales by default, with the primary photo from the MLS feed where it receives one.
• The MLS limits what syndicated sites may show. Since June 9, 2021, SmartMLS has not allowed IDX websites to display additional photos on permanently off-market listings. Other MLSs have their own rules.

Re-listing? Take new photos

If you found the old photos because you are selling the home again, don't plan on using them. Zillow's help center says that "photos provided by previous agents or homeowners cannot be used for future listings," and Redfin says they belong to the listing agent or photographer. They also show the house as it was, with someone else's furniture, which is the last thing a buyer should see.

New photos don't have to be a big job. With the October app you walk the home with an iPhone 12 or newer; it shows you where to stand in each room, keeps the phone level and takes the pictures. An AI image model draws the finished photos from your capture, with a daylight look and loose items left out, and they come back with an AI walkthrough video, usually within a few hours. The model is told to keep walls, floors, windows, fittings and the view; check each photo and label it as AI-altered where your MLS requires. A place of up to 6 rooms is $49 for photos, $99 with a walkthrough and $199 with a 4K walkthrough, and your first place is free. See pricing, what a photographer charges in our real estate photography cost guide, and our guides to how many photos a listing needs and photo size requirements.

As captured

Delivered by October

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