And why do I care?
White balance is a camera setting to ensure white objects appear white and colors remain accurate.
Sounds simple, right?
The problem is that a camera can only see 1 white balance at a time, while the human brain can process multiple white balances at the same time.
Have you ever looked at a photo of a room and the white walls look blue on one side of the room and yellow on the other? This is caused by the camera splitting the white balance between sunlight (the blue) and interior lights (the yellow). If you were standing in the room your brain would just see the white walls and ignore the color cast.
As a professional real estate photographer my job is to accurately represent the property in my images. This means that I must manually adjust the color casts on the white walls to make a scene look more natural.
You can however, overdo it and make every room look hot white like a sterile operating room.
I prefer a little natural color in my images, just not as much as the camera captures, but if you want hot white, just ask.