HAMILTON REAL ESTATE PHOTOGRAPHY BURLINGTON OAKVILLE ANCASTER WATERDOWN REALTOR

Do you have a Real Estate Photographer showing up to your house soon? If you’re hiring a real estate photographer to do a photo shoot of your home then make sure the presentation of the home is perfect for the day of the shoot.

How To Stage Your Home Like A Pro:

Here's a short video presented by a real estate agent in California, and they offer a few great tips for preparing your home:

Why Does The Presentation Of A Home Matter?

Social Media is incredibly important and these days nearly everyone looking to buy a home is using the internet as their first step. The first thing they see are the photos, so that first impression needs to be right because if the photos aren’t good enough then the buyers aren’t visiting. The average human attention span online is now 8 seconds, so without compelling images they skip onto the next house in their search results, and you’re left wondering if perhaps you set your price too high … when in reality maybe it wasn’t the price that was the problem, but that the images being used aren't justifying the price.

As one real estate agent in Virginia put it:

“A great photographer is critical to our marketing plan. They can make every property, no matter what the price range, stand out … and this makes our phones ring!”

What should you be doing to make sure you’re drawing the attention of buyers to your real estate listing? Here are some simple things you need to do to make those real estate photos work hard for you:

Make It Light And Bright:

Make sure all of your lights are working inside, and also open your blinds and curtains to let the light in for the photo shoot. Double check that you have the same colour bulbs in all of the lamps in a room. A great photographer will have no trouble balancing out the light and dark areas, and it’s better to show a little outside rather than to close all the blinds and make it look like you’re hiding something.

Remove The Clutter:

I’ve looked at a lot of homes in my time, and there’s nothing more frustrating than seeing a wonderful home that looks smaller than it really is because there are toys across the floor, and too many things on the kitchen counter, and way too much clutter in the living room.

You would never arrive at your own wedding with untidy hair and anything less than the most carefully selected dress or suit, and it's helpful to apply the same standards to the marketing of a home. Get rid of the things that don’t need to be there, leave the things that do, and make it immaculate. It's always easier to bring one or two things back into a room then it is to get rid of 15 things mid photoshoot.

As an example, one space that gets a lot of clutter is a bathroom, and it's important to have your bathroom looking amazing. Buyers want to imagine their perfect future, and to have a bathroom that looks like a spa at a luxurious resort is a dream situation for most people. Here's a video to show you how to style your bathroom when selling a home:

Arrange The Furniture:

There’s a delicate balance between having too little furniture, with bare open spaces that look decidedly uninviting, and having too much furniture. You may also need to consider arranging the furniture so that a living room, for example, looks conversational and the kind of place a buyer would want to sit with friends. Often you do not want the television to appear as the center focal point of a room when staging a home.

As Realtor Magazine put it:

“Spotlight the flow of your space by creating a focal point on the furthest wall from the doorway and arranging the other pieces of furniture to make a triangle shape. The focal point may be a bed in a bedroom or a china cabinet in a dining room.”

Clean the home:

Showing a home in a photo is different to having buyers walk through an open home, but it’s still important that you present a clean and tidy space. For example, you would want to:

Pick everything up off the floor that shouldn’t be there and clean all floors.
Remove all signs of pets living in the home as some buyers can be turned off by the site of a dog bed or a cat scratching pole. Pick up the pet bowls, hide the toys and treats, and put away the pet beds.
Show that you have room in the kitchen by hiding away any small appliances on display. We recommend following the rule of three. No more than three items on a kitchen counter, and we usually recommend leaving your highest end applicances on the counter when choosing your three (ex. vitamix, charming retro kitchen aid mixer, or espresso machine). Choose one colour to focus on in the kitchen and if you have tea towels out then match the colour if possible.
In your bathrooms make sure all items are in storage, and just leave out a small number of decorative pieces (no more than three).
Carefully clean all windows and mirrors, and make sure there aren’t any streaks because they will show up in the photos (especially in the bathroom).

Prepare The Outside:

Don’t neglect the exterior of your home, and be sure that all trees and brushes are neatly cut, the grass is short, and edges trimmed. If you have some patchy areas try and have those repaired by starting to work on them a month or two before the house goes on the market, and if you aren’t successful bring in a professional to treat it. A great front lawn makes a strong first impression, so take the time to make it look amazing.

You will also want to remove anything stored around the yard such as garden tools, toys, empty plant pots and anything else that shouldn’t be there. Hide the garbage cans and recycling bins.

Don’t Show Seasonal Items:

We’re approaching the holiday season, but that doesn’t mean you want to show that in your photos. When I’m photographing a home I almost always request that any holiday décor be removed from a space before I shoot it, and the reason why is that if the property doesn’t sell, say, before Christmas, then we don’t want to have a tree and decorations in the images that obviously date the photo. As Zillow.com put it:

“Instead, consider ways to decorate for the season as a whole and take photos of rooms without themed decor.”

A good photographer will be willing to give you a few opinions for staging and also love and appreciate when home owners and agents understand that their schedules may not permit them to move many things on a shoot. They also are bringing in very expensive gear and moving things in the home is difficult. I have lost a camera lens because I took my hand off my tripod to move clutter in a bathroom and it faceplanted on the tile floor. That was a $750 mistake. Please understand that it is not the photographers job to move things and stage your home. If they do help, appreciate their effort and time.