Preparing your home for real estate photography
There’s a lot of activity happening in the real estate market now that the holiday season is over, which is great to see. First impressions make a huge difference when it comes to presenting your property for sale, and so often it’s the photos (or walk through video) that are the first thing a prospective buyer will see. So here are a few tips on how to prepare your home for when you have the photographer coming to take your marketing images.
1. Declutter
This is number one, as it’s the big one. It’s when you start to think about moving, that you realise just how much stuff you have, right?! So you might be doing a bit of a clean out anyway preparing to move, and decluttering your home will make a huge impact on the first impression in the space. If you’ve gone through a Marie Kondo phase there might not be much to do. But it could be as extreme as hiring some off site storage, and packing away the items and some larger pieces of furniture that you can live without for a short time.
Then hide all your day to day items like TV remotes, magazines, toiletries in your bathroom/shower, remove floor mats from bathrooms, small floor rugs so that there is more flooring visible, and make sure as many surfaces as possible are clear.
2. Make sure your house is spotless.
For your photo shoot, shiny and clean surfaces will make your photos better. Windows are a big one, and ovens and countertops. Make sure all the beds are made, the sheets are tucked in, and nothing is poking out from where you’ve stashed it for the photo shoot.
3. Outdoor areas are clean and prepared
If you have a lot of things lying around in your backyard from kids and pets, hide them for the shoot. Pools should be cleaned before the photographer is there, and make sure the pool cleaner is packed away. Sweep and rake any leaves and dirt, make sure lawns are mowed and hedges done. Also remove any cars that will be visible on the day of your shoot. We usually don’t photograph the interior of a garage unless there is an amazing feature there, but make sure if there’s a spare car in the driveway that’s gone for the time the photographer is there.
4. Check all your lights are working.
When we are shooting, we have all the curtains open, and all lights on. So check that all your lights are working, and a really good idea is to make sure you have spare globes handy. As you can guarantee if a globe is close to going, it will happen when the photographer arrives! It’s also best to have them all the same colour temperature, for a day shoot this isn’t as important, but it is really important for twilight shoots.
5. Remove personal photographs
I love nothing more than seeing a beautiful family portrait on the wall, but when selling your home you may want to maintain some privacy. So look around your home and if there is something you don’t want to be on display, then try to remove this and ideally have some more abstract art piece in it’s place.
6. Professional Styling/Staging
If your budget allows for professional styling and staging, it is amazing. There are some super talented businesses in Perth that can help you work with your existing furniture and embellish it to have your home on point for market trends, or if it’s an empty property it will make the home seem so much more inviting, and help potential buyers visualise where their furniture would go when they move in. If your budget doesn’t allow for this, we can also get some virtual furniture for your photos, so then online people can see the potential your home has.
The photographs of your property are like a movie trailer, it’s the highlights that entice buyers to want to know more and see the full feature. So make sure those highlights are looking amazing.
Do you have any other tips, or stories from when you were selling your home?