The old saying about not getting a second chance to make a first impression might be cliche, but it’s very true when it comes to selling a home. If you’re going to put your Hunter’s Creek home on the market, you want it to make a great impression on potential buyers and you can best do that with the right photos.
It’s no secret that home buyers start their house hunt online, and a high percentage of those people don’t bother looking at listings without photos and certainly do not have their interest piqued when they see a listing with bad images. They’ll just move on to others, and you want your property to be among the top contenders.
Marketing Your Property to Sell
To generate interest in your home, you’ll have to draw-in potential buyers with eye-catching images. Along with it, a well-written description and a showcasing of your home’s best features. Another must-have is the right price, which is where many sellers go wrong.
“Selling your home – especially if you’ve never done it before – can be surprisingly time-consuming and emotionally challenging. Strangers will come into your home and poke around in your closets and cabinets. They will criticize a place that has probably become more than just four walls and a roof to you, and then, to top it all off, they will offer you less money than you think your home is worth.” —Investopedia.com
Instead of pricing your property based on the listing prices of like homes on the local market, base your asking price on similar homes which have sold in the past three to six months. These will be more accurate, because that’s the amount they actually sold for, not what someone hopes to get.
5 Home Listing Photo Mistakes to Avoid
Once you have the right price, then it’s time to get your home listed in a way that stands out from the competition. Here are five listing photos you really want to avoid:
- Weird angles and crooked photos. Potential buyers will be turned-off by photos that are crooked and at-best perplexed by weird angles. Take the time to line up your shots or fix it in a photo editing suite.
- Out of focus or blurry pictures. These should never be uploaded to your online listing because it shouts unprofessional and might give the impression of being in a hurried panic to sell.
- People and/or pets in photos. Okay, so your furry little family members and your kids are cute, but they represent your life, and that’s not buyers are looking for. They don’t want your life, just a house.
- Poorly lit pictures. There’s no reason to upload poorly lit photos because it will only harm your marketing. Take several pictures with different lighting and choose the best ones to use.
- Partial room photos. Try to capture the entire room. If that isn’t possible, then take photos from different angles to make a complete picture.
To get the best results, have someone you know and trust that’s not familiar with your home look through the images to choose the ones that make the best impression.