When selling your property to someone else, you want to be professional early on. The more impressions you get on your property, the more opportunities you get, the faster you can sell your property. Photos are an essential part of that. If you don’t have any photos, most people are not interested in it, if you have bad photos, people have a wrong impression from your property or undervalue your property instantly. Here are some tips how to do great photos and market yourself out on our platform.
Note: This blogpost is intended for private sellers, not for professionals working in the real estate industry.
1. You don’t necessarily need a professional camera
While a professional photographer can do stunning photos and sacrifices his time (and your money) into this, all you really need is a decent smartphone camera. Most of them today have a great quality, especially the newer models can also balance out light pretty well. If you don’t have the latest smartphone (or an older one with below average quality), ask a friend who has and then let him or her send you, their photos. Very important: Don’t send them with compression, you need the best quality possible.
2. Lighting
Correct lighting is the first aspect of a great photo. Too much or too little lighting damages the impression of a property and can turn away visitors, that otherwise would have been interested.
Meanwhile I present to you a bedroom example with great lighting.
Here’s another great example how to play with lightings, if there is not much available.
3. Variety
People are as much interesting in seeing the exterior as the interior, don’t be stingy with the variety. If you only post the exterior, what’s the point of uploading multiple photos? People are interested in seeing the inside, after all, your next prospect is going to live in there, and it should look welcoming.
Everybody can see the outside of a building, but the outside creates no emotional attachment, because only the inside looks personal and feels intimate like a home.
4. De-clutter the Property
There’s nothing more cringeworthy and embarrassing than a messy home. Seriously, make sure that all clutter is removed. Unnecessary items out of the way and clean the home.
So here’s a list of things you should have in mind when de-cluttering:
- No littering items
- Very little decoration
- No baby items
- Blinds open
- No small items visible such as
- Keys
- Remotes
- Bottles
- Phones/Tablets
- Watches
- No visible pets (cats, birds, dogs, tortoises)
- No other persons (or their shadow)
Remember: It should not look like someone else’ property. It should like the property is already theirs.
5. Focus & Relevance
Focus on the wrong things distracts the prospects attention and may turn it away. You, as a seller, may find something important and want to focus the attention on this but maybe the future prospect isn’t that much interested. This is why it is crucial to leave enough room open for the prospect to choose their focus themselves. In the previous example with the visible baby items the owner chose to focus on the floor instead of the overall room
People want to feel the dimensions, they want to see what they could be able to do with the space.
6. Post-production
Post production is a big topic for itself and we’re not going to cover everything in this blog post. However, many non-professional sellers still fall into lazy traps that can be easily avoided. Here’s a list of things to consider in post-production, which most, if not all modern smartphones can do:
- Crop images where necessary
- Rotate images
- If too dark –> increase brightness
- Reverse for too bright images
- Check contrast settings
And please, don’t do something like this:
Final Thoughts
Why do you need to take all of this into account, you may ask? Well, ask yourself:
“Would you like to move in a house that looks like it’s occupied by a stranger?“
I don’t think most would. The presentation of the property also tells a lot about the personality of the seller. And the prospect can smell this from a distance. Does s/he take the time and effort to actually sell this property? Being lazy and stingy can be portrayed with a simple listing. It may not be conscious but it will be registered unconsciously, and that affects the decision making process in the end.
If there’s one thing you should take away from this post then it should be this:
It doesn’t matter if your property is the best value, best looking or most luxurious – The only thing that matters is how you make the prospect feel, when he looks at your property.
