The first thing that a client will pay attention to on a real estate portal, when looking to rent or purchase a property, is the photo gallery.
Starting, obviously, with the principal photo on the property listing. Precisely for this reason, working to improve real estate photography, by using 360° photos, is essential, not only to capture the attention of the client, but, also, to convince them they have found the property they are looking for.
Below we offer you a series of tips that will help you to improve real estate photography, used to promote properties.
The importance of improving real estate photography
The first thing is to understand why it is necessary to present a selection of attractive and realistic images, and not create any expectations that don’t correspond with reality. Enhance, yes, but retouch or misrepresent, never. A client is mainly interested in a property due to its price and location.
Once properties are filtered on the basis of these criteria, the next step will be to examine the details of the property, which will immediately be checked against the gallery of images.
On top of all of this, there are other resources that make the decision easier, like floor and location plans, videos and the latest innovation in this area: virtual tours around the property. If you do a good job, the client will take the next step, contacting you, or asking to view the property straight away.
If you don’t present your properties well enough (be it omitting information or not showing-casing all of the house, or at least the minimum for someone to decide whether it what are looking for, or because what you have shown is not appealing, or doesn’t correspond with reality), it could be that the visit takes place, but is unproductive. The client will go with low expectations, or will be faced with elements they did not see on the listing.
To avoid this last outcome, it is very useful to have images taken with 360° cameras, which offer realistic images of a house from all angles.
5 tips for improving real estate photography and how you present properties
Taking care when photographing real estate is fundamental, but how can you achieve quality images which grab the attention of possible buyers? Take note of these 5 essential tips.
Pay attention to the light
We all want a well-lit home. For this reason, if there are large windows or ample outdoor lighting, we must highlight this as an asset. To do this, we must ensure that the photographs are taken at the time of day when the house receives the most natural light, and avoid taking them at times when it is necessary to use artificial light.
Pay attention to its spaciousness
Spaciousness is another of the values that make a home truly attractive. The fact that a room can accommodate a large amount of furniture maybe be seen as a positive thing, but remember overloaded images will have the opposite effect: the user will feel the room is full to the brim. Try to clear the spaces as much as possible when taking the images, but do not leave them completely empty.
Simulate everyday life
When we see a gallery of images of a property, we want to feel that we could inhabit each space shown to us. In this sense, each image should convey the feeling of a home that potential clients are looking for. This is something we can achieve thanks to home staging, by elegantly and neatly arranging food on the living room table, for example.
Broaden the viewpoint
Make sure that the images of each property are taken, as far as possible, from an angle that allows you to see the whole room. 360° cameras enable you to do this. When we see images of a living room, a bedroom or any other room in a house, we want to know if they are spacious and be able to get an idea of their real size.
If we stitch together photographs, for example, the client will lose this sense of space that allows them to work out if the size is what they are looking for or not. This can be avoided by using 360° cameras, which create a realistic impression of a property.
Compliment it with extra resources
There are some features that, correctly displayed in the gallery, can become powerful sales pitches. For example, the fact that the bedrooms are bright, the floors are well looked after and the living areas feel spacious.
Whether or not your images convey these details, it would be advisable to add resources to accompany them and help the client receive all the necessary information to promote the sale. Some of which are the following:
- Floor plan - even if we order the images according to how they would be appear walking round a property, the user will not be able to work out where every room is, just by just looking at them, let alone know the layout in detail. A floor plan of the property will be useful to order the images and get a better idea of it as a whole.- Video - the use of a video can resolve the previous issue straight away, allowing one to visualize what it would be like doing a tour of the property. However, we must be careful how we treat the image and ensure the brightness is appropriate, that everything is shown in order and the positive characteristics are shown off in the images.
- Virtual tour of a property - this is the most comprehensive of all our suggestions. Not only does it offer the possibility to visit each room and locate it to perfection, but also enjoy every detail. In addition, the user can return to the rooms that most interest him or her. This method gives us the possibility to create an impression that neither the video or the images can convey, making it possible for the potential client to tour the house as they wish.
This is all about giving your listing an extra boost, beyond simply showing the property. Keep in mind that, by enhancing real estate photography, you will not only be showing a house; you will also be showing the user how it would feel if they were to live in it.
