You wouldn’t turn up at a job interview wearing tracksuit bottoms or present your girlfriend with an engagement ring in a brown paper bag, so it’s surprising that people will try to sell a house worth hundreds of thousands of pounds using a blurry smartphone photo of an unmade bed.
As you might have noticed by now, we think there’s a big opportunity in going against the crowd – and the bar being set so low means you can really take advantage.
The art to taking good property photographs is to grab a buyer’s attention without giving everything away – so they still want to come and see it for themselves. You also want to show it in its best possible light, and help the buyer to imagine themselves living there.
It’s important not to risk being misleading though – it’s just a massive waste of everyone’s time when they realise that the reality doesn’t match up.
If you’re selling your house yourself, photos are one area where a small outlay on a professional photographer could pay off tens of times over. If you spend a couple of hundred pounds and attract one extra potential buyer who bids up the selling price by £10,000, that’s a pretty great return on investment.
We use a professional photographer for every property we list because they’ve got the eye, the experience and the equipment to really bring out the best in a property. Just look at an example and see how enticing it looks.
A picture may paint a thousand words, but having some well-chosen words doesn’t hurt either. It’s important that property descriptions are accurate and factual, but there’s nothing wrong with emphasising a few key features and mentioning some of the local area highlights – such as a really popular restaurant or a well-regarded school.
Then there’s the floor plan. Buyers always want to see a floor plan, so there’s really no excuse not to have one – if you’re in competition with lots of other properties, they’re going to view the one where they know the size and layout works for them, rather than try to piece yours together from your photos. You can even take it a step further andfilm a video walkthrough, which we arrange for our clients on request.
The final result of all this? Your property has more buyers browsing it online, which converts to more viewings (and better-qualified viewings at that because the property appeals to the enquirer – and they aren’t simply getting dragged around by an overzealous agent), and at the end of it all - more offers.
More offers only ever results in one thing. A better sale price.
Luckily this isn’t just an assumption: the portals like Rightmove give us the data so we can verify that this approach works.
So there you go – hopefully you’ve been convinced to put in the effort to your marketing (or bully your agent to make sure they do), and you can give us a call on the number at the top of the pageif you’d like our help.
In the next email, we’ll show you how to conduct effective viewings once the marketing has people flooding through the doors – and we'll share a dirty little estate agent secret while we’re at it…
We're always willing to offer our knowledge, expertise and even a few secrets about selling property. So if there's anything at all you need to know, please get in touch for a chat as we're nice people, and we love being helpful.
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