A recent study by one of the major property insurers suggests that marketing your property using professionally produced photography and careful staging increases the perceived value of the property by over 20% in comparison to marketing the same property using basic images.
That’s an astonishing difference! Now, I appreciate that this is only “perceived value” but there’s no doubt that placing a perception of value in the mind of a potential buyer will lead to more interest in a property and translate directly into higher offers and higher sales prices.
To further support this, the leading property market portal in the UK suggests that potential buyers spend 60% of their time looking at the photographs of a property and that the photos are the most important factor (after the asking price) that attracts buyer attention.
So why aren’t all estate agents offering professional photography as standard?
Firstly, there are agents for whom the penny has not yet dropped and they still think that snapping letterbox images on smart phones and using raw unedited photographs is an acceptable method of marketing. Secondly there are agents who cannot afford the costs of professional photography and would rather get your business by offering lower fees. The conversation with one of these agents usually goes along the line of “if you instruct us to market your property, we could get the property advertised this afternoon – I’ve got my smart phone with me, so I can take some shots of your property whilst I’m here”. If you instruct this agent, then the satisfaction of feeling that you’ve saved a few hundred pounds in estate agents fees, will literally cost you thousands when the marketing of your property dramatically effects the perception of value.
If you are thinking of putting your property on the market for sale, then take a moment to think about the perception of value and carefully select your agent by looking at how they market and present their properties. Make sure that you instruct an agent who uses professional photography, as ultimately it could make a very big difference to what price you achieve for what should be your most valuable asset.
