Photography for Selling Real Estate

A good photograph is worth a thousand...

After you've completed all your repairs and finalized the staging features of your house, it's now time to do a little marketing.

It's estimated that about 77 percent of home buyers start their new home search by looking at listings on the internet. Also, you want to have as many photographs and good descriptions of the property as possible (at least 6 or more, if possible).

If you've looked at properties on the internet, then you've already discovered the wide variety of images in terms of quality. Most of these images are taken by real estate agents. After seeing so many photographs online of such poor quality, I'm convinced that just about anyone with any sense and a reasonably good camera could take better ones if they just tried.

Most real estate agents will provide some photographs of your home. However, these photographs may not be of the best quality or feature the most important points of your house.

Therefore, if you have any experience with a camera, you may be able to take better photographs of your property, both inside and out than what your real estate agent may be able to provide. Ideally, a digital camera is preferred. We live in a digital world and digital cameras are of such high quality today, that almost any camera can take adequate photographs that will fit your requirements.

If you don't have a digital camera and can't borrow one, but you do have a roll-film camera, use that and when you get the film processed, ask for a CD of your images that can then be used.

Here are some basic tips that will help you take better photographs of your house.

Interior photographs should use available light if possible. Flash photos, while they usually provide an even light, often have a flat, unappealing look to them. That means using existing light and usually a tripod. The tripod can be any inexpensive tripod. If you don't have one and can't borrow one, then buy one.

Turn on all the lights in the room. Try to photograph the room when you don't have sunlight directly shining into the room. The contrast of the natural sunlight with your artificial lighting will be too great and the results will be poor. However, you do want to take the photograph during daylight hours so the windows don't look like black holes in the walls.

Use a wide angle lens. If your camera doesn't have the ability to change lenses, use the widest angle setting on your camera as possible.

Avoid including seasonal decorations in your photographs. If your house stays on the market (and it probably won't if you follow the guidelines in this site), but if it does stay on the market past the holiday, the decorations will date the photographs. Also, if you put your house on the market during the winter and it still hasn't sold by spring, re-do the exterior photographs to reflect the current season.

Exterior photographs should be either as late in the day as possible or as early in the morning as possible when there is sunlight striking the front of the house. Make sure everything is neat and tidy (bushes, trees and lawn trimmed). Look for stray pieces of paper that may have blown onto the property. The front door and garage door should be closed. Porch lights and interior lights should all be turned on. One tip professional architectural photographers use is to hose down all concrete surfaces and driveways with water to give the property an even fresher, just after a shower look.

If your house faces north or you're situated where sunlight doesn't reach the front of your house, take the photograph on an overcast day. The even light on an overcast day will allow you to take an appealing photo of your house without the harsh contrast between sunlight and shadowed areas.

Make sure that you include all of the front of your house in at least a few images. Close ups are good for certain things, but good architectural photos should show the entire house. This may mean, if you don't have a wide angle lens, stepping into the road for the shot.

Make sure that any of your interior and exterior photographs are taken level. Don't have the house or a room looking as though it's sliding down a hill.

Another caveat would be to not include people, pets or cars. They only serve as distractions. When doing interiors, be aware of mirrors-- you don't want to see yourself taking the photograph.

Which rooms should you photograph?

Interior rooms to photograph

Every room should be photographed, with special attention (multiple photos) to the kitchen, living room, and den. Not every room needs to be on your brochure since space will be limited, but for web site pages, you can usually put all the photographs you want.

Close-ups of features in the room may be helpful as long as it is an architectural feature that may need more detail. For example, a close-up of the fireplace and mantel is ok, but a close-up of your favorite recliner is not. In most instances, close-ups are not necessary and photos that include more information are preferred.

Many of the really bad photos of home's for sale have pictures taken down dark hallways, through open doors, partial images of rooms without any focal point, and sadly, blurred, out of focus and grainy looking pictures. Plus rooms that have clothes strewn across the floor, basements that are filled beyond over-flowing with so much clutter you can't even see the floor. None of these qualities will help you sell your house.

Exterior photographs

Include at least 1 view of the exterior. It is usually better to be taken at an angle so that 2 sides of the house are visible. Try to stage the view so as to avoid parked cars, and neighbor's houses. Make sure the front door is visible. Use a tripod if you have or can borrow one. Make sure the camera is level! One nice tip is to take a photograph just after the sun sets, but before the sky turns dark-- make sure all the lights are turned on inside and out.

Backyards may be included if there are some interesting features. There is no need to do a documentary of the exterior of your house with photographs of every side. You want to show only the primary features of the property and this is usually limited to the front of the house.

Where to use your photographs

Brochure

This is the most obvious place to use your photographs. With the low price of personal color printers, there is no reason not to have your brochures printed in color with color photos.

For printing purposes, you want to use higher resolution images (i.e. 300-350 dots per inch). There are plenty of graphics software packages available that you can use to re-size your images.

Web Site

Photographs used on the internet need to be sized appropriately so they can be downloaded and viewed quickly. For internet use, you want the photographs to have a resolution no higher than 72 dpi. These photographs should be in their final size (typically, no larger that 500 pixels wide, and usually much smaller than that. Thumbnail photos are about 75x75 pixels and full size images on a page are typically about 450 pixels. This is about 1/2 of an average monitor size. Do not take large size photos and scale them down to fit on the screen. This does not improve the overall quality, and the file size for this becomes extremely large and slow to download. Web page photos should be re-sized to the exact size you'll use on the web page.

Remember: even low priced homes
will have a buyer

Even if your house will never show up in House Beautiful, there's still no reason to have bad photographs. There is a market for every house, no matter the price. YOUR job is to find a buyer for your house and you can improve your chances by having quality photographs.