A toilet seat left up in a filthy bathroom. A room that looks like it belongs in the sequel to Deliverance. Sinks full of dirty dishes. They’re just a few of the bizarre, poorly executed listing photos out there. In a survey by the National Association of Realtors, home buyers rated photos as the feature they use most when searching for a home on the web. Online listings with bad pictures – or worse, no pictures at all – can cause buyers to overlook your home. But amazing photos will do your selling for you!
Here are a few tips for taking great listing photography (some are more obvious than others):
Clean up! Dirty clothes on the floor, bathrooms that look like they need to be drenched in Clorox, and dishes in the sink are big no-nos. Standard stuff, yes, but given some of the listing photos out there, it bears repeating.
Do a secondary tidying. Clear out distracting items like toys, refrigerator magnets and the like before taking photos.
Show all the home’s best attributes. Don’t leave out a well-designed powder bath because you think it’s irrelevant. When it comes to pictures of the home, more is better – as long as the spaces you’re showing are worth showing.
Natural light is your friend. Actually, any light is your friend. You want the space to show light and bright, so open the windows and flip all the switches.
Consider the angles. The best way to show off a room is to shoot from a corner or doorway to include as much of the room as possible. This provides context and makes the room look more spacious than a tight shot does. A good rule for framing is to frame from one corner to the other, but without a wide angle camera you may not have the space to get that wide.
Look at what’s in the frame. If you’re shooting a bedroom, you’ll want to show the bed. Windows are always great to showcase in the photos as well. However, that giant cord for plugging in your phone or I Pad is not what the buyers want to see.
Get out of the photo. A surprising number of individuals show up in listing photos, either purposely or accidentally as the result of a reflection in a bathroom mirror. Either way, it’s best to avoid distracting potential home buyers who will inevitably focus on the person, and not the space.
Use a professional. We all have a smart phone and the quality of the photos they take is better than ever. But photos taken by a professional photographer with a professional camera are still preferable, especially for high-end listings. They also have the proper know-how to photo shop the photos to perfection, fixing any lighting or unavoidable reflections in the mirrors.
To learn what you need to do for the best photos, call Helen today at 847.967.0022 or email [email protected].