I recieved this today. It's amazing they have the need for this. What are agents thinking?

February 15, 2008


To All Five Brothers Inspectors:

In effort to service our clients with the most accurate information, we have instituted several internal quality control programs. We have an internal quality control department whose sole purpose is to verify that monthly inspector information and photos received are accurate, consistent, and reliable.

The newest departments to serve as a quality control is our QC Photo Department. In this department employees review the photos that you have submitted to ensure that photos are NEW, UNMANIPULATED, and ACCURATE when they are being submitted to our mortgage companies. This is for your protection, our protection, and the protection of our clients.

In recent weeks, we have noticed a growing trend of inspectors sending in altered or duplicated photos. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE and will not be tolerated. Any inspector found guilty of sending in altered, duplicated, or photos taken on the same day and submitted on subsequent inspections will be addressed, back-charged, and at management’s discretion, may be made inactive.

Our team of quality control photo specialists are trained to identify photos that have been cropped, color adjusted, and duplicated. They have also been trained to take note of cloud patterns, shadows, seasonal differences and many other alteration clues to ensure a photo’s authenticity. If you are contacted in regards to any of these problems and feel there has been an error, please contact the individual who has requested further information from you. You will find their information listed at the end of the email request.

Please remember that it is important to serve our clients needs in the most professional, responsible and reliable way. We and our clients depend on you, our inspectors, to make it happen. We are a team working together to provide our clients the most complete and accurate information possible for this is what we are paid to do. Without your cooperation, we cannot fulfill our purpose or succeed.

If there is information included in this letter that you do not fully understand, please feel free to contact your representative.

Thank you for your cooperation,

Five Brothers Management

It sure seems like it would be less work to take new photos than to materially change images previously submitted.

Wow. I don't work for Five Brothers, but I do sometimes lighten my photos just a bit. I shoot them through my tinted driver's side window, and particularly on overcast days they sometimes come out looking darker than what you would see if you were standing there looking at the house. I try my hardest to make them look exactly like what you would see if you were there.

I can understand them not wanting you to use a photo you have already used in the past though. I just did a BPO on a property yesterday that I did one on a little over six months ago. It used to have a window air conditioner that is no longer there, and it is now missing a few shingles that weren't missing previously.

I think the tone of the letter is what hit me as odd. It is agressively written which leads to the idea that they have had disagreements with agents doing this.

texasgal, I think we all have done what you have with the lightening. I will have to keep that in mind when working for them and make a note of it in the comments.

Wow..I work for them and didn't recieve that letter. However, I have been refusing their calls lately because they call me wanting a "rush" in just a few hours and I have gotten way to busy to change my schedule at the last minuete like that for $20.

I don't do a lot for them maybe one a month. They call all the time with orders for the opposite end of the state. They can't seem to get the radius thing working.

I crop my photos all the time. I don't work for this company, but if my other clients started to reject photos that had been "altered" that would be quite a few of mine.

I don't work for 5B but crop and lighten my photos also. Especially with interiors.

I had an order from FARVV come back a few days ago because a difference in values with a previous order. I clicked on the other agent's photos to make sure we had the same house and he used 2 yr old MLS photos! The house was a different color and in a lot better shape. I called farvv, but their indian didn't understand.

It doesn't seem to me their concern is cropped or lighted photos. It's photos that have been submitted already being submitted as new. Or photos that have had changes, like the house number changed to something else, or the color of something, or the replacement of a patch of dead grass. Stuff like that. *Real* manipulation.

But I'd bet they are bluffing. Photo analysis is not that easy and is time consuming. If they do implement this, it could be costly.

Maybe the letter is just to scare people into thinking twice about cheating?

The only kind of alteration I have ever done for photos I submitted (not w/5Bro)was to crop something out. One example was when a guy saw me raise the camera and started running toward my car, yelling, I took off and snapped a few pictures fast. My side mirror showed up in the only usable photo, so I cropped that out. Another time I snap the pictures and when reviewing them see in the front picture, a young child was coming around the corner of the house. Submitting photos with kids in them is a big no-no, so he got cropped out of the photo before I sent it. Oh yeah- one of my cameras keeps resetting the time/date stamp to 1-1-04 and even when I turn it off, it pops back up, so I am guuilty of cropping the wrong date out of the photos...
Okay, I guess I am guilty of "altering" photos, but sometimes, I think there is a good reason. Using old photos, changing colors or elements (one agent mentioned a kid in a picture, so she phot-shopped some shrubbery there to block out the kid)- those kinds of things just aren't acceptable, in my opinion... But i guess they may have to be strict because they are seeing too much dishonesty. It's a shame...

The only kind of alteration I have ever done for photos I submitted (not w/5Bro)was to crop something out. One example was when a guy saw me raise the camera and started running toward my car, yelling, I took off and snapped a few pictures fast. My side mirror showed up in the only usable photo, so I cropped that out. Another time I snap the pictures and when reviewing them see in the front picture, a young child was coming around the corner of the house. Submitting photos with kids in them is a big no-no, so he got cropped out of the photo before I sent it. Oh yeah- one of my cameras keeps resetting the time/date stamp to 1-1-04 and even when I turn it off, it pops back up, so I am guuilty of cropping the wrong date out of the photos...
Okay, I guess I am guilty of "altering" photos, but sometimes, I think there is a good reason. Using old photos, changing colors or elements (one agent mentioned a kid in a picture, so she phot-shopped some shrubbery there to block out the kid)- those kinds of things just aren't acceptable, in my opinion... But i guess they may have to be strict because they are seeing too much dishonesty. It's a shame...

I just got my first order from 5B, full interior due Mon. In the email it states, "ONCE THE HOME HAS BEEN SECURED WE WILL ADVISE ON ACCESS IN" ...So for me I guess its hurry up and wait!

Maybe they are going to use the money the never paid me....hehe

Wow... I never knew that cropping was inappropriate. I always crop the subject front photo for a close-up of the house number. If you shoot the house number from the street, it's pretty tough to read it in the photo. I've NEVER had an issue with any other company on this, and I think it's pretty obvious that the house number shot is a blown-up cropped version.

Also, I click Auto Contast on every shot (I use Picassa)before exporting it to a saved Photo File. Again, I've never heard of this being forbidden... I think they are taking extreme measures now, because they find some unscrupulous brokers submitting "old" photos or MLS photos.

FARVV WANTS you to crop the photos if there are inappropriate things in the image. Like if I take a street photo through my windshield and the upper part of the car dash shows in the photo, I crop off the bottom part of the photo. I also use auto levels in Photoshop to adjust color if the image is too dark or tinted (from taking photos through a tinted windshield). I think the issue here is re-using old photos or MLS photos, or drastic photo manipulation.