Avoid Property Pix Faux Pas

March 24th, 2006

I was recently quoted in the West Linn Tidings real estate feature section in which local brokers were asked to share their top tips for improving the prospects of a quick and profitable house sale.

While most brokers offered good, tried-and-true staging advice, my tip touched on one of my pet peeves–poor property photos (or none altogether).

Online photos have replaced the ‘drive-by’ as the most common first impression. Studies show that nearly 75% of home buyers start their shopping by viewing properties on the Internet. And nothing inspires clicking the “NEXT” button faster than a listing that includes poorly lit or composed photos.

So, don’t let your remodeling, curb appeal, and staging efforts go to waste due to sub-par photos.

A few thoughts on taking property pictures:

Do’s

• Take note of your home’s most attractive rooms and features. At a minimum, take a picture of the front, the kitchen, the main living areas (living/family room), master bedroom, and if applicable, the valley or mountain view or maybe shots of deck, patio or other yard feature.
• Remove the breakfast dishes and any other clutter from your countertops before shooting the kitchen.
• For exterior shots, minimize shadows by shooting at midday or under flat lighting conditions.
• Turning on lamps and spot lighting can add nice glows to pictures, particularly from the outside if light is waning.
• Stand on a small ladder and shoot pictures from up high. It adds some interesting perspective and can make the room look bigger.
• Unless you are good with cropping and resizing pictures, take tightly composed shots. Don’t use the zoom function on the camera. Move in as close as you can so the camera can take in as many details as possible.
• Take plenty of pictures to choose from. Digital photography is so inexpensive, there’s no excuse for not having a bunch of choices to pick your top 8 or so that will make up your online portfolio.

Don’ts*

• Don’t shoot toward a bright window and expect to see any detail in the foreground.
• Don’t take your pictures in vertical or upright orientation. I’ve yet to see a multiple listing service that doesn’t show photos in horizontal (or landscape) orientation.
• Don’t take a picture of the bathroom where the focal point is the toilet.
• Don’t shoot pictures of the inside of your garage unless you are showing off a workspace or garage organization system. No one wants to see your car or clutter.
• Don’t upload your pictures to the multiple listing service (or whatever you might use to sell by owner) in the wrong order. Nothing like paging through 3 or 4 pictures of the interior before getting to the 1st exterior shot.
• Don’t use a camera phone to grab images.

* Listings featuring these poor marketing efforts are too common in my opinion.

Image by eqqman.

Technorati Tags: home, selling, staging, advice, pictures, photography

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Entry Filed under: Selling Advice