Want to Sell Your House Quickly? Use Compelling Images
What is the secret to selling your house quickly and getting the best possible deal? Simple… Present it at its best. The process of selling your house is not solely about getting it listed on a credible real estate website. While this will help you sell your house, you still want your listing to stand out and attract as many prospective buyers as possible. This, you can achieve with good photography. List your property using great pictures and you are bound to land amazing deals.
To ensure that you get the very best visual representation of your property, Private Property is now offering a photography service to its clients. Request for free photographs for your property today
Now, to the incredible tips on how to use the images to sell your next house…
Clean up the house
This might sound obvious but sadly, it is one of the biggest mistakes you can make when trying to sell your house or a property you own. To capture images of a clean home, it has to be actually clean.
When cleaning your home and preparing it for pictures, you need a pair of trained eyes; preferably a real estate professional who knows what should be left in the house and what should be taken down. As the owner of the home, you have a tendency to be blinded to quite a number of things that could easily constitute a major turn-off to prospective buyers. For instance, a trained property agent would let you know that you should take down the exotic paintings hanging on your wall, your customised artworks and other items that you don’t necessarily need to have in the house. Removing personal items allows a potential buyer to see themselves filling the space with items that reflect their tastes and personality.
Don’t forget that you are not just cleaning and organising the interior of your home. Ensure you declutter the outside area of your home as well. Take out the trash, and remove all objects that might not be pleasant to see; hoses, ladders, baskets, wheelbarrows and all building materials should be removed.
The idea behind organising the home for pictures is simple. A property that is organised, clean and has its facilities in good condition is attractive to prospective buyers. Ensure the entire home is neat before you proceed to take pictures and show them to the world.
Remember to stage your home
Staging something for photography involves artificially constructing scenes to look a certain way with the intention of appealing to the intended audience. In the case of your house as a listing, staging involves setting look and feel of the house in a way that would make a potential buyer see themselves living there. You can research on how best to stage a house or you can enlist the help of a professional.
When you stage your home, it sells several weeks faster than if it is not staged. Many do not realise this but staging and capturing good pictures of your property go together. We took out time to provide some staging tricks you can explore before taking pictures of the house
Repaint: A good paint job on your house can add thousands or millions of Naira to the perceived value of your property. This will also give the potential buyers the feeling that there will no need to repaint except he/she is really keen on certain colours or wallpapers.
Quick repairs: Don’t overlook anything in or around the house that is in need of repairs. You don’t want broken pipes or other fixtures that need repair appearing in the background of the photos you take.
Get fruits: When staging the kitchen, you should consider having a beautiful bowl of fruit in there. Please note that you don’t have to spend a fortune buying expensive fruits. Just get regular fruits like bananas, oranges, grapes, apples and perhaps a pineapple.
Get new towels: Towels are not super expensive so you should try to get new ones for the staging of the house. The fact that you like your current towel does not mean you should not change them. Just get something new to achieve the desired effect.
Create ambience: Before you show off your house, you want to pay attention to lighting and show the next owner that it is in its best possible state. You should essentially make them have a strong desire to live in the house.
Pay attention to outdoor light
One mistake people often make when taking pictures of the interior of their property is not paying attention to the amount of light coming into the house. The result is dark pictures that potential buys end up struggling with. This is more prevalent with people who try to take their pictures of their property by themselves especially those who use their phones. Dark images are largely unattractive and this is not the sort of images you want to show to the next owner of your property. Keep the images bright and attractive.
The best time to take images of the interior of your home is either early in the morning or in the evening. At these times, the sun isn’t too bright and it is perfect for your photos. A typical buyer wants to look at the images of the house and imagine beautiful moments he/she can create in the future. Pictures of dark rooms will not achieve this.
When you take interior pictures of your property in the evening or early in the morning, it flatters your home. When taking pictures, endeavour to leave the blinds open. This allows enough sunlight come into the house and will make your pictures brighter.
How to take exterior photos
When taking pictures of the exterior of your house, you need all the sunlight you can get. Unlike interior pictures, pictures of your house from outside need to be taken when the sun is high up. Evening pictures are not bad but pictures with a lot of sunlight work best. A bright picture of your home comes with a lot of positive energy for potential buyers of the home to see.
Position yourself properly
When most people want to take pictures, they stand upright, hold the camera at eye-level and snap away. This is not the right way to shoot pictures of a home you intend to show to potential buyers. When you capture pictures this way, you end up distorting/tilting the vertical lines of the walls, cabinets and windows. Rather, what you should do is to bend your knees slightly and keep your hands as steady as you possibly can. Ensure your hands don’t shake as you press the shutter release button on the camera. If you shoot this way, you will capture images that are clear and not distorted.
Walk through your house in a video
When you are done with the pictures, you could do a really short walk-through video of your house for the potential buyer. Not everyone will watch the video but it is bound to get the attention of potential buyers who are really interested in seeing as much of the property as they can see before a physical inspection. If you eventually decide to shoot a walk-through video, take a look at the tips below:
- It should be simple: For obvious reasons, you don’t need to capture everything about your property in the video. Just pay attention to the major parts of the home
- It should be short: A walk-through video is not a documentary so please, keep it short; two or three minutes will work just fine
- It should be positive: This is not where you want to point out anything negative about the property. If there is anything you want to point out to potential buyers, save it till they get to the stage of requesting for an inspection
Remember that the essence of your pictures and walk-through video is not to sell the house. Rather, what the pictures and video do is to capture the interest of potential buyers who then come for an inspection. Buyers make up their minds to buy a house during or after an inspection and not by looking at pictures. The pictures are magnets that pull potential buyers towards the house and what it has to offer.
Something to note
You should note that studies have down that houses listed with good photographs sold faster and for more when compared to other properties listed.
For a better chance of selling your house faster and at good value in the estimation of the buyer, clean the house, stage it and then take amazing pictures.
Are you interested in free photography for your property? Feel free to request for one today.
