Navigating Real Estate Transactions

Part of the reason someone comes to an open house or views a home for sale with their own eyes is because of the photos they have seen online or elsewhere. The photos taken of your home can make or break your sale. These photos should show the best side of your home and capture the beauty so a potential buyer will want to look further than those pictures. If the pictures aren't all that great, it may be a turn off for most potential buyers. See below for tips on how to take great home photos.

Clean Your Home

Before even attempting to take photos of your home, your house needs to be photo ready. Clean your home and remove as much clutter lying around as possible. Clean out closets until they are nearly empty. Nobody wants to see photos of your clutter or your children's toys laying around. They want to see a clean room, and with clutter around it will block that view. Clean and clear out all of the rooms in your home before attempting any photos.

Take Photos From Doorways

Be sure to take photos from the doorway to see the view of a room as if you were walking into the room. To help get a larger view of the room use a wide angled lens and zoom out to help get not just the entire view of the room, but to make the room appear larger as well.

Take Photos From Up High

Take pictures from up high if you can such as from the top of the stairs looking down on a family room to show the height of the room as well as the view of the entire room. If you don't have a staircase to use you can stand up on a ladder (with the help of a friend) and take the photo from up high on top.

Take Exterior Photos From Afar

Try to capture the best side of your homes' exterior by standing farther away. If you have to stand in the middle of the street or in a neighboring yard to take the picture, do so. Take it from the side to get the entire view of the front of the home, as well as the side to showcase the yard in the photo as well. If you have anything in the yard such as a gazebo, pergola or deck that you want to showcase, be sure to take pictures of this as well.

Taking great photos of your home is an important task. If you aren't sure about taking the photos yourself, you can hire a professional photographer or talk to your real estate agent about having these photos taken for you.