Rainy, green Washington State is an American hub of natural beauty. From forests to beaches to mountains, the state glitters with loveliness. Three national parks call Washington State their home, including Mount Rainier National Park, which is host to the world’s largest volcanic glacier cave system. The caves are only a two-hour drive from Mercer Island, though there are many more local things to do on Mercer Island.
Mercer Island has four beaches, the Mercer Island Farmers Market, and multiple wine bars. Residents of the area enjoy a high quality of life, a thriving job market, and no personal or corporate income tax. Selling a house in a first-rate, growing state is a demanding yet satisfying task. As a seller, it is important for you to market your home with taste, and to do so, you should be intentional with how you take pictures of your house.
When a potential buyer is browsing homes online, before they read about amenities or neighborhood statistics, their immediate focus will be on what the house looks like. According to a 2019 study, 65% of the population are visual learners. As a seller, it is your responsibility to capitalize on this. To ensure a sale, the pictures you take of your house to sell should be clean, high quality, and visually appealing. There are a number of ways to photograph your home so it will sell, and they all take effort and purpose.
Invest in photography
The photographs you take to sell your house have to, first and foremost, be inviting. For a photo to be inviting, it must be clear. A buyer will not be attracted to a collection of blurry, low-resolution pictures of your home. What a buyer wants to see are crisp, clean images of a space they can imagine themselves living in. A cell phone is a fine vessel for photography, but when selling your home, using a professional camera will elevate your property’s aesthetics.
Hiring a professional photographer is a great first step in the photography stage of selling your home. Professional real estate photographers are easy to come by, and they know the ins and outs of taking attractive pictures of homes for sale. If, however, you are not comfortable hiring a third-party photographer, an HQ camera in your hands can still do the trick.
It is recommended that a seller taking their own photos of their property invests in a high-quality camera. A digital single-lens reflex camera, or a DSLR, will produce clear and sharp, high-resolution photographs for you to market your home with. DSLR camera lenses can detach. Versatility in lenses allows you to use a wide-angle lens, which can capture more in one picture than a standard lens can. This way, one single photo can encapsulate an entire room. For best results, take photos from the corner.
For an even more elevated set of real estate photographs, a photographer or a seller could edit the photos for added brightness and clarity. Use RAW picture format to upload and edit in Adobe LightRoom, or send your photos to a professional real estate photo editor at Box Brownie.
Stage your home with class
Before you or your photographer take pictures of your home to sell, it is important to ensure that a fresh, clean space is being photographed. As a potential buyer looks through your home photos, that buyer looks for attractiveness and orderliness in your home, as they are imagining it as their own. Because of this, decluttering and depersonalizing your house before pictures are greatly important.
To declutter is not just to put away the tissue boxes, loose pens, and excess blankets. You also want to declutter your decor. While your wall hangings and vases may not look like clutter in the context of your home, getting rid of those items for photographs can help to highlight your space rather than your things.
Personal photos can be stored away, as your space should look like it is full of possibility, a sort of blank slate, so a buyer can focus on what they can do with the home. Not only is it important to declutter items, but a seller should ensure their furniture is arranged to best suit the space. Use your furniture layout to make rooms look bigger. Open windows for natural lighting and to open the room up so buyers won’t feel closed in when viewing photos.
There are certain colors a home seller can use to compliment the space. It is recommended that the staged space is painted in grays or beiges. In larger rooms, darker, warmer colors can make it feel more cozy. Some colors you can choose to paint the interior of a grand home are beige, gray-beige, or sand.
Keep a simple, limited color scheme. With the walls painted in warmth, fun accent colors can go a long way, but they should be used sparsely. Try incorporating just about two colors per room for some fun flair, but neutrals should rule your world. In a beige-gray room, you could incorporate some mossy green and raspberry. In a sandy room, see how light blue and soft orange can be great accents. It is most important to try not to overwhelm potential buyers with chaotic colors and curated personalities.
Showcase the best parts of your home
If you are taking pictures on your own, be sure you highlight the best parts. If hiring a professional, point out special amenities, cosmetic details, etc., that you believe make your home a special, worthwhile investment. Not only are buyers looking to be able to imagine themselves in the home you are selling, but they are also looking to fall in love. By determining what you feel makes your home unique and documenting those quirks, you invite a potential buyer to get excited about your favorite special details.
Wide-angle photographs of the home are important when selling, but taking a few close-ups here and there when necessary can make your space stand out to buyers. Have a fireplace? Take an up-close shot of it. Beautiful kitchen backsplash? Sauna? Wine fridge? Crown molding, even? Snap a picture! Your home is unique; it is full of superior appliances, aesthetic features, and character. As a seller, you should highlight these in your photography to prove the individuality of the home.
Bring questions to your support system
By bringing a professional realtor onto your house-selling team, you can ensure that you only upload your best pictures to market your home to potential buyers. A realtor can double-check your work or the work of your hired professional photographer. Washington State realtor Samuel Piha, also known as Sandy, is a seasoned source of advice. Contact Sandy today to help you sell your Mercer Island real estate!
