Selling your house privately
You made the decision, it’s time to go on the market. You want to give it a go yourself, save agent fees and list your house for sale privately. Where do you start? Well, we can’t help you with all the details, but we can give you some sound advice when it comes to the content you will definitely need for marketing and some you might not need, but maybe it’s so cool you just want it!
Photos
Photography of your house is an absolute must. In order to list your house on Trademe, Facebook or any other online platform, at the very least you must have photos. But don’t fall into the trap if just ‘having photos’, especially if this is the ONLY thing you are planning on marketing your property with, make sure you have great photos!
Sure, you could take the photos yourself, phone cameras are actually pretty good these days! But before you do, consider this: you are already behind the eight-ball by not being able to leverage the profile and contacts of an established real estate agent who will have a list of leads to send you right away, so why take the risk of having people scroll past your listing and miss out on potential buyers because your house doesn't catch their attention.
If you still want to have a go at taking your own photos, we recommend you take a look at our blog ‘Top 3 Secrets for Great Real Estate Photos’.
Did you read it? (even just a skim read?) What did you think? Do you know how to achieve those things? If so, fantastic! But, if that was a little daunting, read on….
Our property photography is really good and trusted by agents and vendors because we have decades of professional photography experience, combined with tens of thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment and professional editing, any good, professional real estate photographer will always provide you with industry standard real estate images so at the very least, you can blend in amongst agents’ listings online and be noticed by potential buyers.
But don’t just take our word for it, check out these examples to really highlight the differences between professional and non-professional photos:
And if you want to learn even more, there is more to read under these photos…
Non-Professional Photo
Outside is over exposed, walls & ceiling are multiple different colours, the photo is ‘muddy’ looking, it’s hard to take in the room. The lens isn’t wide enough to show enough of the space
Professional Photo
Outside is well exposed, walls and ceilings are white. The photo is clear, viewers can take in all of the room easily. Wide angle lens gives a good sense of the space
Non-Professional Photo
The walls, ceiling and bed are green, yellow and red (they should all be white). The carpet is dark and outside is glowing aqua as well as being over exposed. There are distortion problems with this photo - notice the wall cabinet on the right on a big lean.
Professional Photo
The white surfaces (walls, ceiling & bed) are true to colour. The carpet is bright and shows as the actual colour it is in real life. Outside is true to colour and correctly exposed. All of the vertical lines in the room are vertical.
Non-Professional Photo
There are a lot of harsh shadows in this image. It’s really difficult to see the detail of the living area at the far end of the room. Once again, the outside is over exposed, but the major issue is huge distortion in this photo. This is very noticeable with the furniture in the foreground of the image.
Professional Photo
All of the colours are showing true to life without any harsh shadows. Some shadows are still included in the final image or else the photo would look like a digital rendering. The outside is exposed well and all areas of the room are easy to take in. There is no distortion, the furniture in the foreground is true to life.
Are you still with us? Awesome! It’s great to have you :) We have even more insight about selling your house privately.
2. Video
Video is super hot right now! You absolutely don’t need an agent introducing your property or a voiceover, as long as you have really good video, potential buyers will watch it all the way through and if they do, it’s even more likely that they will contact you for a viewing.
Fun fact: We created a video for a house recently which sold to a buyer who was based in Auckland. He viewed the video 116 times and purchased the property without ever setting foot in it, simply because he loved it from the video. How cool is that! If that isn’t proof that video for selling your house doesn’t work, we don’t know what is!
Video not only gives potential buyers the opportunity to experience your house in multiple dimensions, it also gives you an incredible marketing tool. Video ad’s perform so much better on social media than static image ads, infact videos are shared 12 times MORE than photos!
The process isn’t simple. Even coming from a background of filming for TV and films we had to learn how to create videos for real estate, not to mention the very specific professional gear required for the job. This is definitely one we would recommend you skip trying yourself. Hire a professional real estate videographer if you want to have a video of your house - you’ll be surprised how affordable it actually is!
3. 3D Virtual Tour
The final piece to the Real Estate imagery marketing puzzle. We’ve all used Google Street view right… checked out how our house looks, maybe even clicked along the road to see if the Google car captured our neighbours outside, had a peek up the driveway - you know you have! Well, you can have this exact concept, but inside your home. 3D Virtual Tours are extremely popular right now, especially in the current market where people aren’t able to get to open homes easily or are locked down in another city. Think of this as your ‘virtual open home'.
3D Virtual Tours are created with specialist scanning devices (the really good ones have nine lasers in them!) which capture a series of scans throughout the inside of your house. This is then created into an online virtual tour which can be explored by potential buyers on their mobile phone, desktop computer or if they are super cool and own a 3D headset, they can literally walk around their own house, exploring yours!
Whilst we wouldn’t say every house MUST have a 3D Virtual Tour, if you think your house might appeal to out of town buyers or if New Zealand is looking to be in some sort of lock down due to the pandemic, then a 3D Virtual Tour is a really good addition to consider.
If you have never seen a 3D Virtual Tour, you can check out an example here
Well, that brings us to the end of explaining your options for imagery when selling your house privately. Hopefully you now understand all of your options and you are armed with the knowledge you need to get your place on the market and appeal to fantastic buyers! All the very best for your sale :)