We go to see a lot of houses that are failing to sell with a local agent. And without exception, we are always pleasantly surprised by what we see. Unique features that weren’t in the brochure, an interesting history that isn’t mentioned, and beautiful elements of the house that just aren’t given justice in the property photographs.
At the other end of the spectrum, perhaps you’ve been to see houses that have been a tad oversold. Poky living rooms that looked massive in the photos, a garden that looked like a candidate for the RHS but in person looks more like a scruffy grass verge, or a bathroom taken at an angle so you couldn’t see the giant patch of mould on the walls.
Selling a home with beautiful marketing is an art. We want to flatter, but not mislead, after all. Imagine you are having your photograph taken for a dating site. You want to look your best, have your hair so it looks just right, and hope your photographer captures the best light to get the most flattering angle of you.
Most of us would think that’s perfectly acceptable.
But say you saw someone’s photo on a dating site, and arranged a date based on that photograph. On arrival, you don’t recognise your date, because the person waiting for you looks nothing like the photograph on their profile. In fact, you suspect the photo was taken more than a decade ago.
Most of us would consider that to be misleading!
It’s the same with houses. One reason we don’t use wide-angled photography is that it isn’t a true representation of the house. Instead, we arrange the room so it looks at its best, and make sure there’s lots of natural light. Also, if it’s a big room, it probably warrants two or three images, or even more. We’d far rather take our time and capture all the best features in the room with several photographs, than try to get the whole of one room into a wide-angled image that distorts and misrepresents.
We find that if we create beautiful images that really show off the home’s best features, whilst still represent the house truthfully, we not only attract the right kinds of viewers, we are also much more likely to get an offer our client is happy with.
Having an authentic and transparent approach takes longer, and costs (us) more, but the result is definitely worth it.
