When you come to sell your home and you are obtaining marketing appraisals from estate agents one of the questions that you should ask is “do you include professional photography”. Some agents don’t, some agents offer it as an additional service for a fee and others include it as standard. It’s worth looking on the agents’ websites at properties similar to yours and considering the quality of the images. Professional photography comes at a price but how does that price compare to the value of the property? it’s a very small proportion and it can make a big difference to the selling price and speed of sale. Look on it as an investment in your most valuable asset.
Why Is It Important?
To start, house hunting is largely done online these days, at least in it’s early stages. People go on to the property portals such as Rightmove or Zoopla, enter their search criteria and a list of properties meeting those criteria comes up. Unless the property has a premium listing, you will have one image for each property (I’ll call it the lead image), usually an image of the exterior. The buyer scrolls through the list and if they like what they see they click through to read more about the property and see more images. They then decide whether or not to view. So the quality of the images really matters. If that lead image isn’t appealing buyers may not bother clicking through to read more and see the rest of the images and book a viewing.
Do Your Images Set Your Home Apart?
Professional photography ensures that those images showcase your home and make it stand out from the competition. If you have a beautiful home your photography needs to do it justice. It isn’t necessarily about quantity but rather the quality. Have you ever looked at a property online and seen an image and thought “why is there a picture of X, Y or Z?” There may be what seem to be random images or so many that you lose interest and give up. A professional photographer will take pictures to accurately show the rooms and showcase particular features, perhaps some lifestyle images.
The Whole Package
So what’s the connection between professional photography and property styling? Professional photography is all about having quality images that are clear and taken from the right angle etc. There is no point having quality images if the subject matter isn’t appealing. It’s all about having attractive spaces photographed to a high standard. This applies what ever the type or price bracket of your property (except perhaps if you are marketing the property as a complete renovation project when you will probably only have exterior shots).
The aim of all this is to maximise the selling price of your property and sell quickly. Want to know more? Then contact me on 07745 876182 or e mail me at judith@homestyle4u.com for a free 30 minute consultation. I cover the Wirral, Cheshire and the North West. I’m here to help.