How to photograph a house to sell.

It sounds scary, I know, but it really isn’t that bad if you follow a few simple rules.

Rule number one is taking the photos at the best time of day with the best natural lighting possible. The best lighting possible is referred to as the twilight hour which is the hour just after the sun sets yet the sky is still blue. It’s best not to photograph on a dark, gloomy or rainy day.

This twilight hour isn’t very long, so you should take the time to prepare before this magical hour.

In preparing the home to be photographed, you will need to make sure that the home is clean and uncluttered.

Just before taking the photographs you should take the time to turn on all of the lights in the house and make sure all of them are working as a burned out light bulb will not show well in photographs.

So here are a few basic hints. First, we need to know that the item that we are photographing is the house, so taking pictures of furniture is sort of pointless. There are a few items or places that we should focus on and we should be able to produce a good picture of the house with just about 10 photographs

The first photograph being a view of the entire front of the home. This should include the front door and the garage doors if they can fit in the same picture. This picture will give potential buyers a general idea of what the home looks like.

Picture number 2 should be the nicest view from the home. Could it be a view of some mountains, A view of the ocean, A field, Or maybe the neighborhood?

Picture number 3 the front door, or the grand entrance. Here you should take a little more time to try and compose the picture a bit. Is there a planter or flower that could be in the foreground of the picture? Try to get closer to the door, sometimes just taking a picture of the door handle will be more than enough to draw in someone’s attention.

Picture number 4,5,6 here a little bit of mystery is ok and taking a picture of every room in the home can be boring, so just focus on the best rooms usually the kitchen, master bedroom , and master bath, then the living or great room.

Picture 7,8,9 here take a few close ups. Suggestions could be taking a picture of the kitchen cupboards, the faucet on the bathtub that is if it’s nice, then how about a picture of a chandler or of a fireplace or the mantel?

Taking pictures of a house are not meant to show you the entire house but just enough to give a potential buyer an idea of the overall feel of the home. With just ten pictures you will easily be able to tell if the house is a diamond, a diamond in the rough or just a rock, or as my wife would call it a fixer-upper.

Taking a quick few snapshots will take just a minute or so of your time. Going through this list of 10 pictures will take about 10 minutes. And if a picture is truly worth a thousand words, then in just about ten minutes you’ve been able to write ten thousand words.

To top it all off, all I use to take pictures of a home is an Ipad. The pictures can then be uploaded to http://istockhomes.com as your listing pictures and even used to create a video to place on youtube. and all of this is completely free.

Give it a shot, you could end up saving thousands of dollars.

Photo by Bmak through Adobestock