You’ve decided to sell your home, engaged your preferred estate agent, agreed the desired selling price and they have made good progress in terms of the marketing literature, but we all know that people buy with their eyes and that starts with the all-important photography.
Without fail, everyone knows the old adage of “a picture says a thousand words”, and for good reason: those images of your property will attract potential buyers and start to engender emotional feelings towards the property even before they set foot across the threshold.
Even after the quickest look at images online or on social media, prospective buyers will already be sub-consciously imagining themselves, their family and even their furniture in your home, their new home.
And when they have property particulars or brochure physically in their hands, they will spend even more time examining each image, pouring over them time and again before deciding whether to arrange a viewing or make an offer.
We all know that photography can be adjusted and adjusted to make images look even better but ask any professional photographer and they will tell you that – another great saying – the “camera never lies” and that it will only capture what it can see.
Getting your home ready for photography is something that you can play an important part in, after all, nobody knows your house as well as you do.
It starts with looking at each room with a fresh and impartial pair of eyes: if you can mentally strip away your personal artefacts and possessions, what would you see?
Rooms will immediately look brighter; without lots of pictures, clear walls make the rooms appear surprisingly bigger; even just plumping the cushions of the sofa will add to the overall effect.
We’re not for one minute suggesting a massive clear-out of your family’s possessions or packing them away in storage until you move to your new home – after all, you’ll still be living here until the sale completes – but, if you can, make use of any storage you have to hide things away just for a few hours.
It doesn’t need to be too onerous a task either, after all none of us needs to add even more work to our busy days, but even little things like tidying away pairs of shoes or reducing the number of coats hanging up can make a difference.
Some of it can even be done gradually over a few days leading up to the photography appointment, and there’s no saying you can’t get the children involved to do their bit to help as well, especially when it comes to their rooms!
But it’s not just about taking away; adding a vase of colourful flowers or a bowl of fresh fruit can bring a welcome dash of colour that will catch the eye and perhaps be that visual ‘hook’ that catches the attention of prospective buyers.
This is especially important if you’re not going to be present when the photographer is doing their work as you can’t expect them to be staging and dressing your house for you. With this in mind, we have created a quick checklist for you to refer to when getting your home ready to be photographed.
Our Photography Checklist has a few pointers for each room of the house, and we fully imagine that you’ll have plenty of ideas of your own which could be added but, what’s most important, is that you have some of these key principles in mind when getting your home ready to be photographed.
The last thing you want is to be seeing the images and saying, “Oh I wish we’d moved that…” or “I can’t believe we forgot to hide this…”.
And if you are uncertain about what you should or shouldn’t be doing to present your house in the best possible way for photographing, you can always talk to the team at Milne Moser and we’ll be happy to advise and show you a few examples of what can be achieved.
