Tag: professional property photos

Five common mistakes when photographing properties – and how to avoid them

Posted on by Callum Domigan

We are always waxing lyrical about your property photography and how it makes the difference in the speed and sale price of your listings. It isn’t a matter of rocking up and taking some pictures, you need to use your photographs to tell a story of the property, to let your viewer feel like they are walking through the house (potentially the one of their dreams) online before they decide to book a viewing.

We have plenty of articles and tips on how to take a good photo and what you need to do to get them just right on our blog. But it’s just as important to know what NOT to do when setting up and taking your photographs.

 

1.Wrong lighting.

Lighting really can make or break the look of a property – externally and internally.

For example, too much sun for external photos will give shadows or saturation and you will lose some of the details of the house. Internally if the photo is too dark it can make the room look small and gloomy and discolour walls, making things look dirty.

 

What can you do?

  • Take photos of the exterior on an overcast day or towards dusk and have all the lights on inside making it look warm and inviting
  • For interior images play with the lighting inside to make it bright but not stark – you may need to bring in some extra lamps.
  • With our brightness adjustment and shadow booster functionality on our property photography enhancing tool you can really level up your images in seconds.

 

2. Too much clutter.

Even if the current owners have cleaned and tidied for your arrival there can still be things lying around that will spoil the shot and look messy. If there is too much clutter it can make the room looked cramped and unappealing.

 

What can you do?

  • Walk around the property first to see if anything needs hidden or removed – It may only be a small thing but could take over the whole picture
  • Even things that should be there, such as cushions or a bold rug may look better if removed. Try to keep the decor neutral.
  • Our property photography enhancing tool will remove that cup on the kitchen counter that you missed. It can help clean up your image in seconds.

 

3. Composition & the wrong angles.

Taking your photograph at the wrong angle can make the difference to the look and feel of the room or even the front of the house. Changing the angle of your camera by just a few feet can completely change the quality of the photo.

 

What can you do?

  • You may have to adjust your height according to the furniture in the room. If the bed or coffee table is low to the ground, you’ll want to bring your height down so everything is straight. Between waist and cost height is often best.
  • Take note of the natural lines in the room and ensure to keep them straight in your photo. For example, turning your camera just a few degrees can make the whole room feel wonky.
  • Try to have only 2 walls showing in your photographs. Rooms can tend to look longer and/or narrower than they really are when you shoot down the length of the room showing three walls meeting.
  • If you do take images that are a little off and look wonky you can change this in seconds by uploading them to our photo enhancing tool with it’s vertical correction functionality

 

4. Poor quality.

The biggest mistake you can make is using poor quality images.  Especially with low-cost listings, many agents think it is ok to use less than good images. it’s not! Bad photogrpahy not only effects the time it will take to sell a property, but it will also reflect poorly on your brand. You need high quality images every time. This will go a long way to selling your property for a good price and in quick time. It will also level up your brands reputation and in turn bring in higher value properties for your books.

 

What can you do?

  • Read some of our blogs on setting up your rooms and exterior for a good shot
  • Take a few shots of the same room and angle so you can ensure there is one good one of each room
  • If your images don’t turn out as well as you hoped you can use our property photography enhancing tool to enhance your imagery to professional level. Giving your listings a boost and your business a solid reputation for quality property listings.

 

5. Too neutral.

We always advise to make the room as neutral as possible to appeal to the maximum numbers of buyers, we want them to imagine their style and furnishings in the entires home. However, we also won’t don’t rooms that lack warmth. Small pops of colour can have a big impact along with making the room look more inviting.

 

What can you do?

  • If the rooms are all white (or grey) you can add some flowers or bright cushions to add that pop of colour
  • Put the lights on in the room or bring some lamps into the picture to bring that warmth in.
  • Our property enhancing tool not only adjusts brightness but can also enhance the colour with the colour enhancing feature.

 

By using our fast and effective photo enhancement tool you can level your photography up without the high cost of money and time and give you consistently great photos each and every time. If you would like to see it for yourself check out our free trial….

What photos showcase the best property listings?

Posted on by Callum Domigan

It’s no secret that photography sells properties and good property photography sells property faster and often for a higher price than those with mediocre images.

It can also help to elevate your brand and bring in higher-value listings going forward for your business.

Win win!

 

What photos do you need to showcase?

 

Here are our 3 tips for an overall better listing post.

 

1. Curb appeal: THE best image to use should be a photograph of the outside of your home.

First impressions count so make sure you do everything you can to enhance your property’s curb appeal. If 68% of home buyers think kerb appeal is important when buying a home (Survey by YouGov) then this should be the first image they see and a superb one. If the weather isn’t right come back on a day that the lights is good and play with angles leading into the house.

 

2. There’s always an angle: Duplicating a few images of the same room is fine, but try to add some from different angles to give the viewer a real idea of the space.

Ensure you have images of the kitchen (the most important room in the house from a viewer’s perspective), living room or large bedroom. Then think of the location and needs of those living in the area – For example, photos of large storage areas, especially in cities where space is at a premium would be a bonus.

 

3. Leave it out: Don’t take pictures of everything in the house.

It’s best to avoid any unnecessary photographs such as stairs, boilers, or small cluttered rooms that are unlikely to entice someone to view your property.

 

Finally. The order of your photos can be important and help tell a story, or help the viewer to feel they were walking around the house from the front door – we recommend this order: the exterior/garden/front door, hallway, kitchen, dining room, living room, bedrooms.

 

If you take the above tips paired with great photography then you are on the right track. We know a professional photographer can cost a budget that sometimes you don’t have so that’s why we created PropertyBox image enhancer alongside the floorplan service.

 

By using our fast and effective photo enhancement tool you can level your photography up without the high cost of money and time and give you consistently great photos each and every time.

 

If you would like to see it for yourself check out our free trial….

5 tips for better property photographs to sell your listings faster

Posted on by Callum Domigan

PropertyBox helps you enhance your property photography and level up your images quickly and efficiently (saving you so much time) but it always helps to ensure those photos are the best they can be before uploading them to PropertyBox to give you that extra competitive edge.

1. It’s all about the angles!

Try to think of different ways you can take pictures of the house, inside and out, that show the property’s potential. For example, try taking a picture of the house from the driveway rather straight on. It will show a larger part of the front of the house and the garden from an interesting angle.

 

House with driveway

2. Still angling for a good shot?

Use gridlines to balance your shot. This is a super quick way to ensure the right composition of a room (or outside shot) so you get the best out of the space by using ‘the rule of thirds’

If you place points of interest in these intersections or along the lines, your property photo will be more balanced, level, and allow viewers to interact with it more naturally. If you have a wonky shot our PropertyBox has a Vertical Correction feature that can correct this but it makes the picture much more engaging if the composition is spot on.

3. Leading the way

As with above, it’s always good to bring the viewer into the picture, help them to imagine themselves in that room or garden. Leading lines are great for this, creating a sense of depth – leading the viewer in.

When you are taking your image look for those lines – think staircases, wooden flooring, picture rails, and table edges. They don’t have to be straight, they can curve, just an interesting line that leads you into the picture.

4. Declutter

Simple but effective. PropertyBox has a feature that can remove unwanted objects quickly but it’s still worth looking around the room to see if there are things that could be moved/removed to create more white space helping to make the space look bigger.
show a decent amount of floor space. Sometimes just taking a little bit of time here can make a huge difference.

5. Light up

With our brightness adjustment, shadow boosting and colour enhancement features, PropertyBox is great at ensuring your imagery has the right light and colours, giving it that professional feel. However, if you have all the lights on in a room this gives the effect of warmth and a cosy feeling for the viewer.

Decluttered kitchen

Use a tripod or at least lean the camera against something to have sharp pictures. Camera shake is common.

Take props. PropertyBox can blur out faces and images but we can’t add those homely touches that help the viewer imagine themselves making your listing their home. Things like candle holders, flowers, plants etc can really help bring a room together and again lets the viewer imagine themselves in that room, with their family. You need to create a space that looks easy to live in, not something sparse and cold. 

 

Try for free. You could be selling your listings faster and levelling up your reputation for quality, speed and efficiency.

What’s new at PropertyBox this Spring?

Posted on by focaladmin

The product team at PropertyBox, part of the Focal Group, is working hard behind the scenes to continually develop this innovative product to help estate agents look the best they can online with enhanced photography. But that’s just the start of it. We caught up with Product Director Michael McHugh and Product Manager Victoria Znamenskaya to find out what’s new at PropertyBox and what exciting announcements are in the pipeline this spring.

Working alongside PropertyBox’s designers and developers, Michael and Victoria use in-house artificial intelligence (AI) to refine and develop the product making it the best in the market.

 

What’s the thinking behind PropertyBox?

MM: The best way to help the 60% of agents who take their own photos and need to get them enhanced is to offer them a really fast high quality result every time, so we can add value to their business and help them win the click and the instruction.

VZ: We’re using AI to achieve this so we can make improvements, upgrade the service and add features making our customers’ jobs a lot easier and helping them to work faster and more efficiently.

 

So what’s new this spring from PropertyBox?

VZ: We’re now offering “try before you buy” so customers can upload up to 10 photographs from one property and see the amazing results in seconds. The photos will be brightened, straightened and blue skies added and then they have the option to sign up and pay if they want to get those enhanced photographs back and ready to upload to property portals and their own websites. This gives new customers the opportunity to see what we do and give the service a try.

MM: We’re adding more flexibility to our pricing, with two further price plans for agents who need to enhance fewer photos cost-effectively. The first is “pay as you go” with no monthly fee, you just pay 70p for each enhanced photo; secondly our new “starter plan” for £39.99 per month, per branch, for up to 100 photos and 35p per extra photo. For agents with more volume, they would pick the current “pro plan” at £79.99 per month for up to 250 photos, then 25p for any extra photos. Larger agents can contact us for tailormade packages.

 

What do you like most about your roles?

VZ: It’s about being creative and finding the perfect solution to all the challenges faced by agents who want to look good online.

MM: I think it’s being able to take an idea and using the constituent parts from AI and design, building it into something that processes images for estate agents in seconds. It’s like you’ve got a problem and how do you solve it. When we show people what we’ve done they are genuinely blown away, it gives me great satisfaction.

 

What other innovations are you planning at PropertyBox?

VZ: There are a huge range of possibilities – we’ve only just started! We want to grow and add many features to our product to make estate agents’ lives easier – making sure everything is possible in one place.