Do professional photos matter when selling a house?

The most important question to ask here, is what does the marketplace want?

The marketplace is the pool of buyers in the market and the sellers in the market. It truly does depend on whether the market is a buyers’ market or sellers’ market too.

Our objective as a professional estate agency is to achieve the highest sale price for our seller (who is the paying client) to the best buyer (who is going to cause the least headaches) and ensure the buffer of the sales process is smooth. This is in an ideal world.

Why use a professional photographer when selling a house?

Buyers want to be able to visualise themselves in a property before even deciding to view it. Professional photographers know how to present rooms and create shots that really highlight and showcase the size and features within a room – bridging reality with an enhanced and optimised view of your home.

It’s important to present a property for sale with accuracy as well as giving it a “dream home aesthetic”, which is where professionals really come into their own. The quality of their equipment and their experience means we would generally recommend an agency which, like ours, uses professional photographers.

First Impressions Count

There is an initial exposure period when you list your property on the portals, and every potential buyer who has an internet connection can see your property from the moment it is listed online. They say you have a period of approximately 14 days before your property is not new anymore and becomes a depreciating listing in terms of potential enquiries.

Therefore, it is important to set your property up in the best way possible to go all in from the time it is very first listed.

If your photos are not up to scratch or do not look their best, then they potentially will not catch the eye of the beholder, being the buyer, at first glance. There is a massive chance that your property is not showcased in the right way and the photos do not do it justice, therefore, you could be missed or even ignored by a whole section of the marketplace.

If your property is being missed and depreciates after those two weeks into an old listing, then by the law of averages, the number of viewers that you will have through your door diminishes rapidly.

Why Professionals are better than the agency?

The key is in the word, professional. The estate agent is not a professional photographer, the photographer is the pro.

The professional photographers that we use go deep into the settings of a camera to make their photos ‘property friendly.’ What I mean by that is the finer tuned details to enhance the photos are the property.

They are trained to make the best angles, the photos stand out, and the colours appear brighter and they usually have better cameras than the agency themselves.

Most agents should know how to do a decent job, but you only really get one strike at your property listing, so it is important to make first impressions count.

By not using a professional, you are in fact taking money out of your own pocket.

For example, if professional photos mean that another property listing looks better online compared to the standard estate agency shots of yours, there will be a percentage of viewers that will not even look at your property online and will therefore not view your home.

We are in the Smart Ages

Many of our clients will know that this is our favourite phrase at present, we are living in the smart age. Buyers are lazy, people are lazy in this era and buyers will not go out and view a property on a whim or a recommendation from the agent. We have the technology now, so the buyers we call to recommend a property will always ask us to ‘send the photos’ to see if it is worth taking time out of their busy schedules to view your home.

People have work commitments, childcare commitments, and less time so buying a property can rapidly turn from an exciting new venture into a chore after the first 10 viewings.

Many couples when out viewing will not be able to view the properties together, so they will take photos, and videos and maybe conduct virtual viewings for their spouses to see the property before wasting their spouses’ time.

So, the work is in the detail. With professional photos, you are setting the bar high and competing with similar properties at similar prices within the marketplace.

Conclusion

Professional photos are essential in my opinion.

We usually achieve higher prices and more viewings with professional photos than the standard photos. This is a difficult one to prove, but those within the industry that have used both will just know that pro photos are not even the future, they are the now!

It is marketing and it is your greatest chance to get viewers through the door.

More enquiries transpire into more viewers. The more viewers going through the door equals a potential open day. With an open day, the more people mean the better.

Then the eBay effect happens. When it comes to potential buyers making offers, you should have multiple because the marketplace always buys on emotion. The more offers, the more chance that the agency you employ will achieve a higher price because more than one person wants the property, and the power of the negotiation plays into the hands of the seller over the buyer.

This means that you should receive more money for your property with professional photos in play rather than standard agency photos. It is a 1% extra difference that could mean £10,000 extra in your pocket at the end of your sale.

Therefore, in my humble opinion, Professional Photos are essential for every new listing.

The investment is truly worth it.

If you are looking to sell, check out our pricing page and get in touch with us.

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