Recently you might be thinking to yourself: “Now would be a good time to sell my house.”
And you’d be right. While some seasons fair better statistically, those seasons (spring and summer) are also the time when everyone else is selling.
In order to help boost your house’s assets there are a few other simple tactics you can use to get the best results when you’re ready to list your home for sale.
Stage it
Before you do anything else, you need to stage your home. That means decluttering, cleaning up, taking down all those personal family pictures and tucking away any eyesores that might detract from the features you’re trying to highlight. We’ve got a good guide for you here:
Go natural
Natural light is your best friend when it comes to showcasing your home. Don’t rely on your camera’s flash because it’s likely to cast harsh shadows and reflect off mirrors or windows. You can turn on the lights in the home, but also make sure to throw open the blinds and drapes. Shoot your photos early in the day before the sun gets too low — and don’t take photos on a gloomy, rainy day.
To take the best possible outdoor pictures of your home, the best time of day will depend on which direction your home faces. You’ll want the sun behind you when you take your outdoor photos to minimise shadows. So for east-facing homes, get out there and start shooting first thing in the morning. For west-facing homes, afternoon is better.
When in doubt, if you’re in a rush and need the photos taken all at once, opt for the morning.
Kneel down
You know how when you take a selfie, you raise your arm up and tilt the phone to get that angle that magically slims your face? Yeah, you want to do the opposite when you’re taking pictures of your home. This is possibly the one time when you want the object you’re photographing to look as large-and-in-charge as possible, so take a knee before you start shooting.
Shoot from an angle
When you’re shooting interior rooms of the house, stand in a corner or doorway to get the widest possible angle and allow potential buyers to imagine themselves walking through the home. When you’re photographing the exterior try standing at an angle, rather than straight-on, to show the depth of the home.
Take a few close-ups
If your home has “character” then by all means, showcase it. It doesn’t hurt to include a few close-up shots of the beautiful wood trim around the windows, the kitchen backsplash or the staircase spindles. Don’t go overboard on these; less is more when it comes to close-ups, but highlighting a detail or two is a nice touch.
Keep it real
Don’t go so overboard that you make your home look like something it’s not. Having a bunch of potential buyers show up and go, “Uh, that was false advertising”, won’t do you any good. So don’t use the old photos of your home from when you bought it 12 years ago before the paint on the siding started chipping all over and you allowed every last bush to get wildly overgrown. And don’t use a wide-angle lens to make your smallish rooms look massive.
You want to show your home in its best light, but it does still need to look like your home.
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