Photographing Your House Checklist

By Matt Unangst, 23 Jan 11:10

Here are some important points to remember when photographing your house:

• If you get only one photograph in your ad, take the photograph from a slight angle to the street.
• Take your photograph in full daylight, preferably on a sunny day. Make sure the sun is behind you when you shoot to avoid glare in the photo. Do not take a photo of the house when there are shadows across it.
• Get as close to the house as you can while still including nearly the entire house in the photo. There is no need to include surrounding scenery in the photo.
• Make sure everything movable is out of the shot. No one wants to see your trash cans or cars when deciding whether or not to take a look at your house.
• Clean up your yard before taking the photo.
• Open your blinds and curtains before shooting to get a more welcoming shot
• Don’t be artsy. The point is not to create a work of art, but to get people interested in purchasing your house by taking a professional-looking photo.
• If you have space for several photos, take some of the interior of your house. Buyers will especially want to see the kitchen and living room, and the master bedroom and bathroom if they are impressive.
• The same thing goes for inside shots as outside ones: clean up before taking the photo. Rooms with less clutter look more spacious, and thus, more desirable to a potential buyer.
• Figure out what the most visually appealing corner of the room is and stand in the opposite corner when taking the photo. Open the drapes and turn on the lights to get more attractive lighting. Get some floral arrangements and place them around the room. Replace the flowers when they begin to wilt.
• Use a photo editing program on the photo to make the lighting as attractive and professional looking as possible.
• An interesting idea is to create an online virtual tour. Virtual tours usually have still pictures, panoramas, floor plans, links to maps, school info, and aerial photos for the house. There are virtual tour vendors which will create an online virtual tour for you, with a package that usually includes professional photography and the web page that hosts the tour, along with other add-ons you can select. If you are working with a broker to sell your home, the broker can most likely set up a virtual tour for you with all the services of a virtual tour provider. Most listings do not have virtual tours, but many search engines allow prospective buyers to search for only those that do.

KEYWORDS: house for sale, homes for sale, virtual tour, house photographs, classified ads

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Tags: photography