How We Photograph Your Home for Sale and Why You Should Care
From speaking with past and present clients, my impression is that the vast majority of them don't really understand the importance of photography in the process of marketing and selling their home. They also fail to understand the many obstacles we encounter when we try to portray their home for sale at its best.
The photographer's job is to present your home to the public in an attractive and appealing manner, to show off the home's best features. We photograph a home in an effort to capture and convey its beauty and comfort. That can be a difficult task, especially with smaller, less-expensive vacation homes and cottages. Let's face it, some houses are just plain homely.
Vacation home owners usually furnish their summer homes for comfort, not style. Many summer homes, cottages and cabins are furnished with second-hand items or thrift store bargains. So the photographer is confronted by rooms with seedy-looking sofas, sun-faded or worn upholstery, ugly dining tables and funky-looking swag lamps or wall hangings. The existing decor may look comfortable from the seller's perspective, but to a buyer it may be perceived as an eyesore. And that homely decor can distract or detract when the dwelling is viewed online or during a showing.
The condition of second homes may vary quite a bit. Not all summer cottages are in pristine shape. Some of them need a new coat paint or stain. Others suffer from decaying decks, moss and lichens coating a roof or railing. In the eyes of a seller, they are miniscule issues. To a buyer, they mean the expense of a construction project. And even the most skilled photographer can't cover these issues up, not only because they are obvious, but because it's ethically wrong to mislead the public when we advertise a listing.
Photography requires light. If your home's interior is chocolate brown and dark, with poor interior lighting, the photographer is forced to artificially "add" light using Photoshop or other software. Adding light in the editing process has its limits.
Small rooms and cramped camera angles are another issue. I've encountered sellers who asked me why I didn't include bathrooms, the laundry area or the utility room in a virtual tour of their property. Sometimes it's simply impossible to get a decent shot of a tiny 7 x 8 bathroom. And if all you're going to wind up with is a view of a toilet, vanity and shower enclosure, why bother to include photos that add nothing positive or appealing to the general look and feel of the dwelling?
In the end, the real estate photographer attempts to do the best that can be done under the circumstances. That also means carefully sequencing the photos to highlight a home's best features. It can also mean excluding a home's least attractive spaces from a slideshow or virtual tour.
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