Archive for the ‘Working With Sellers’ Category

How to Take Pictures That Sell Houses

Jul 16, 2008 Working With Sellers

As more and more buyers use the internet to find houses and sellers depend on internet marketing to sell houses, it is important that agents take special care to take good real estate photos. The real estate photo is key in attracting buyers to the listing and convincing them they should see the listing.

We’ve all seen our fair share of bad real estate pictures. It’s sadly not uncommon to see bad real estate pictures include blurry images, dark rooms, people, animal, pets, the agent’s car in the driveway, reflections of the person taking the picture in the mirror, or my personal favorite of pictures showing a snow covered house in July. (And the agent is probably wondering why it still hasn’t sold!)

To help you take pictures that sell houses and have great real estate photos you can use for your internet listings, property flyers, and newspaper advertisements, here are some simple tips of ways to take great real estate pictures.

1. Adjust the Lighting: Lighting is very important in the overall quality of real estate pictures. Experiment with turning on and off lights, facing away from windows, and the use of the flash on your camera. Watch out also for mirrors, which may reflect the flash or worse show you in the background snapping the picture!

2. Watch the Weather: Where I live, finding a nice sunny day is hard to come by. Ideally though you should take the pictures during the day (no night time photos unless they have a magnificent outdoor lighting system you are showcasing!) and when it is not pouring down rain.

3. Stand in Doorways/Closets/Out the Window: Ideally you want to take pictures that show the great use of space, so if you stand in a room and can only effectively photograph a small corner, it will make buyers looking at the picture online think the room is tiny, even if it isn’t. Try positioning yourself out of the doorway, in the closet, or even try taking the photo outside through a window if nothing else works.

4. Watch out for distractions: There’s nothing worse than seeing a car in the driveway, people, pets, a TV on, or anything else that distracts from the photo of the house. Be sure none of these things will interfere with your picture. It is best to forwarn your seller when you will be taking pictures and to have the home ready, cars moved, and pets secured before you begin.

5. Use High Resolution Photos: Most cameras will allow you to choose the photo resolution. Ideally you will want between 600-1280 pixels, with the higher the pixel number the higher the photo quality. This will make your images shine when printing and editing, instead of becoming blurry or distorted.

6. Showcase only the best: Many people want more pictures (I think out company website now allows us to add up to 60 pictures!) But unless you’re featuring a multi-million dollar 8 bedroom 30 acre estate with two guest houses and a barn, 6-10 photos will be sufficient. You’ll want the kitchen, the living room, the front of the house, the back of the house/backyard, deck, and any other rooms of the home that are well decorated and staged. Having duplicate pictures of the same room will likely only confuse people and pictures of things that aren’t enticing will not attract buyers through the internet. I’ve seen people photograph hot water tanks before and put that in the MLS. Hot water tank pictures are not pictures that sell houses!

7. Go Light on Photo Editing: It’s okay to edit a photo from time to time, but only if the photo editing is realistic. Stretching a room out 3 times it’s size or adjusting the colors to give it a red tint or to the point it looks grainy will not give you any bonus points with the seller or entice buyers to view the house based on the pictures. They will ask themselves, “what is wrong with this house that the agent had to edit the picture so much?”

8. Consider Outsourcing: If you have no idea how to use a digital camera or have never been good at photography, don’t despair. Instead, find someone you can hire to take the pictures for you and upload them into the MLS or onto a disk for you to use. College students, stay at home moms, and even retirees with a passion for photography can be an excellent resource for inexpensive professional quality pictures.

These 8 simple tips to take pictures that sell houses will help your listings shine amongst the competition and help you gain admiration from your sellers. Have any other tips on taking pictures that sell houses and how to photograph real estate? Feel free to leave them in the comments below.

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How Much Will it Cost Your Clients NOT to Sell?

May 19, 2008 Working With Sellers

It is hard to convince most clients to reduce the price of a home. But if a home is still on the market after the usual Days on Market in your area, it’s time for you to be bluntly honest with them.

An easy way of showing them that it’s better to make a price reduction sooner than later is to show them how much it will cost them NOT to sell their home.

First, calculate how much they are spending each month on their mortgage, taxes, utilities, maintenance, and traveling to and from the home if they’ve relocated or are traveling father for a job.

Next, calculate this monthly expense so they can see how much they will lose for every month they don’t sell the home. For example, let’s say for a home it costs $2500 a month for the seller to pay all of the expenses. In two months, this is $5000, in three months, $7500, in four months $10,000, and in five months $15,000. If they let their home sit on the market for six months at the current price, they will lose $20,000.

Many sellers do not look at the big picture. By showing them they are losing money by NOT dropping the price, it gives them a different perspective and often is enough to convince them to reduce the price by $5,000 or $10,000 at least.

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What Does Your Sign Say About You?

May 4, 2008 Working With Sellers

It never ceases to amaze how many decrepit real estate signs I see just driving around each day. Some signs have peeling paint, are leaning like the Eiffel tower, many don’t even have a phone number or name rider on them. Others have so many riders hanging off of them you can’t even read what they say.

Who is responsible for these signs looking this way? It’s hard to tell. I called our sign representative once to tell her about a sign I’ve driven past probably 30 times on property that wasn’t even for sale anymore that looked like it was hit by a truck. You know what she said to me? “Sorry, I can’t do anything about it. I don’t have a work order for it and I can only take down signs when the agent sends in a work order.” It’s ridiculous the agent neglected the sign, and even more ridiculous that it didn’t faze the company that they had an expired and broken sign representing them on a busy stretch of a major highway.

Another pet peeve of mine regarding signs are seeing “open house” directional signs on a Sunday night or Monday morning. If you made the effort to set the signs up in the first place, you should also make the effort to take them down. When the signs are up in the middle of the night, people wonder if they are trustworthy or they become oblivious to them and are less likely to follow them when their really is an open house.

You should be visiting your listings at least once a week. Be sure during that visit you inspect the sign to make sure it still looks appealing from the road. Don’t over clutter it with riders and make sure your name and phone number are easy to spot. Signs tend to bring in just as much interest as newspaper ads or internet calls, so it’s important it represents you well. When the sale closes be sure you remove the sign in a timely manner. There is nothing worse than an agitated new homeowner who’s angry they still have a sign in their yard two weeks after they moved in.

It may not seem like much, but your sign says a lot about you. Make sure they are in good condition, are easy to read, and accurate. It’s these little details that will set you apart from the hundreds of other agents in your market.

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Keep Your Sellers Happy With a Weekly Report

May 2, 2008 Working With Sellers

One of the biggest gripes about real estate agents from sellers is they never know what’s going on with the sale of their house. They might often think the agent is lazy or not trustworthy because they don’t realize how much “backstage” work an agent does while trying to find a buyer for their home.

One of the ways you can avoid this is to keep in constant connection with your sellers. You at a minimum should be speaking with them once a week and give them an update on showing activity, advertising, and feedback.

A great tool to use for communicating with your sellers is a weekly report. It will also make you shine out amongst other agents at a listing appointment if you tell them it is your policy to call them once a week to keep them updated with the progress report of selling their home.

Here are some things you can include in your weekly report:
1. Number of showings and feedback from agents who viewed the home
2. How many page hits the home had on the internet
3. How many cold calls were received on the property
4. How many people you contacted regarding the property
5. Examples of the advertising that was done or is planned
6. Homes that sold in the past week and new competing homes on the market.

You can give the sellers this report verbally over the phone, in person, or of course via email or snail mail if they prefer. It only takes about 15 minutes to gather and present this information to the seller. It is worth every minute you put into it. If your sellers are happy, the more likely you will not lose the listing in a slow market and also the number of referrals you receive from them will increase after the transaction closes.

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