BiggerPockets

LOL, I can relate Dawn, my wife gives me grief all the time for not taking enough before pics, I'm too busy jumping in and tearing it all apart. J Scott does an awesome job of covering his rehabs on his blog.

Dawn,
I do not do them on every house, but I do have quite a collection. One thing I use them for is to sell a house in poor condition. I show them they type of work my guys can do and they can pick colors. This helps them see the same vision that I do when I look at a project.
I actually sold a house that was gutted down to the floor joists one time for over 100k.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Good luck!

I also take before and after photos as well as (but not on every one) videos. I use them for a multitude of reasons such as website, recollections, proof of performance history, presentations for acquiring new private funders, and more.

I have taken before, in progress, and after photos for my projects. I'm only on houses #2 and 3, but I post them on my website to give others an idea of what I do and also to remind myself of where I've been.

We always do...
some I have burned as DVD slideshows for the kids I am helping get into RE.
I find it great for keeping a log of all the things you should have done differently....
Also if your wife is taking b4 pics while someone is sanding the drywall the lens will be caked in dust & all future pics will be barely visible until you realize it & clean the lens !!!!!

I always do before and after pictures as well as during pictures. The during pictures are uploaded to an online picasa album that helps to keep our lenders up to date with the rehab progress.

In one of our current homes we are using before and after pictures to put together a marketing package for the home. We hope it will help reflect the extensive rehab we went through while reassuring potential homebuyers of the quality of our work.

Dawn - a great tool you can use for pictures and tracking progress on projects is Evernote. Follow the link: http://evernote.com. You can have it on your phone and on your computer, will sync to both because cloud based, allows you to take pictures, write down notes on each picture, do voice memos, and then share those pictures with other via a simple link to that Evernote folder. I look at a lot of houses and this tool has completely simplified my ability to keep track of photos and information on each house. Hope this helps!

@Mike G. brings up a good point. Let me start by saying I don't do rehabs. When I think of the marketing of a property though, does a prospective buyer "want" to know how bad of condition a property was in before the rehab?

Putting myself in a buyer's shoes, I would be more likely to run, or at best, offer way less on a property that I knew was in really bad shape a few weeks before. How do I know what is behind the drywall and new paint? Under the new laminate floors?

I'm always amazed at the TV shows on flipping where they show the people selling the house after the rehab and they're explaining to the prospects how bad the house was before they just fixed it up. You can see most of the buyers visibly move their head back a little like "That's bad, why did you tell me that?"

If I was buying a restored 1949 Oldsmobile I would want to see the before and after because I expect something that old to have gone from bad to good. If I'm buying a 1979 ranch, I'm not so sure I want to see the grungy bathroom and stained ceiling before photos - or even told how bad it was.

I understand from the rehabber side that you're proud of the work and it's cool to show off how bad something was before and how great it looks now, but should a buyer be told how bad it was? If they ask, yes then full disclosure, but should it be volunteered?

Just curious.

@Jerry K. on BP we daily have new members wanting to know how to break into the business of flipping, rehabbing, etc. Those that are in that market segment and know how to do it, and post their pics, give those wanting to learn a visible way to understand the process of rehabbing, and allows the rehabbers to show off their work. I think it gives newbies encouragement, and allows them to see that it may not be as hard as they envision...or it may be harder, who knows?

Personally I like seeing the pics, I think it ads another dimension to the forums.