This home had beautiful furniture, but it was all black, or very dark, so HDR alone would never work in this scenario.
The first three images are the images the Realtor received from a company contracted by Listing Concierge, which did not offer professional Real Estate photo editing and retouching by default. To keep cost down for the Realtors, they only offered to merge the images to HDR.
So, by not offering professional photo editing and retouching, the images did not get color corrected, and the windows did not get retouched since they got overexposed due to the harsh contrast between the light outside, along with other items that needed attention in post production. The other problem here is that the editors used by the company contracted by Listing Concierge are 6+ thousand miles away in a different country, and they never saw the property in person. As a general business and ethics rule, when outsourcing photo editing in Real Estate Photography, the photographers who capture the photos have to be very knowledgeable in managing light in all kinds of scenarios. If they don't use proper lightning when photographing these properties, it will be very difficult for an editor to know what the colors were, or what was outside those windows. I should also mention that this company contracted by Listing Concierge is asking photographers to shoot JPEGs only, which are not meant to be further edited as they are a lossy format, and there are simply not enough pixels available to edit. More so in extreme contrast situations as shown below. In a case where the "contrast" is so harsh between to the light pouring in from outside, and the furnishings inside, which are very dark in this case, plus the light fixtures inside, you MUST shoot RAW and shoot at least 5 brackets, though in the case of this house, seven brackets would have been more appropriate if HDR merging was the only editing option offered.
This was a beautiful home misrepresented by terrible photos.
Notice how you can't see anything outside the sliding glass doors, and the floors and furniture have an orange tint.👇
Here's what the house actually looked like upon being photographed with proper lightning, (HDR is NOT a light source by the way), and with professional photo editing applied as well:
I hope this helps better understand why professional photo editing and retouching, as well as using proper lighting are so important when photographing Real Estate. Your goal is to keep the house on the market for as little time as possible because most people cannot afford two mortgages. Misrepresenting sellers' homes ultimately hurts their wallets, and our job is to avoid that at all cost.