Presenting a period house for sale.

[88v8]

Or perhaps choosing an agent; or a photographer.
Was struck by the difference in the two presentations on this house. Unusual, in that when a second agent is appointed they often seem just to copy the first agent's presentation. Not in this case..
Anyway, an unremarkable house which has suffered rather from blandification and one of my pet hates, downlighters, but one set of pics is a 5 second put-off, the other set, well, what do you think?

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-53552969.html?utm_content=v2-ealertspropertyimage&utm_medium=email&utm_source=emailupdates&utm_campaign=emailupdates3day&utm_term=buying&sc_id=4990530&onetime_FromEmail=true

and

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-49147726.html?utm_content=v2-ealertspropertyimage&utm_medium=email&utm_source=emailupdates&utm_campaign=emailupdates3day&utm_term=buying&sc_id=4990530&onetime_FromEmail=true

Ivor

 

[parkview094]

Wow, that's quite a collection of blue and white paraphernalia!

 

[tobydog]

What a difference. They always say that to take a picture you need to see a picture. The second agent was totally lacking in imagination and clearly didn't appreciated what he had in front of him in the way the first one did.

I used to work in the business many years ago before the likes of Rightmove. In those days (ignoring time wasting random mailshots) you had a one photo opportunity get a potential buyers attention. One photo in the paper and one photo in the shop window. You had to make it count but I was appalled by some of the images my negotiators would come back with and, of course, you couldn't even see them for several days. Every 'photo' cost money whereas these days you could take 1,000 and delete 999 of them.

Farr and Farr won't be going much further with their attempt.

 

[LadyArowana]

Photos of properties are mildly interesting, but you should really concentrate on the floorplan and the state things that will be left like bathroom fittings and the kitchen. It's a quick job to change horrible colours and curtains, all the other crappola leaves with the vendor and isn't relevant.

 

[steveb]

I am continually staggered how poor estate agent photography is, in general terms. 75% of the houses I peruse on rightmove or similar I would send the agent packing if they took pictures of our house like it.

You can tell it is a rising market as they send a monkey round with a camera, and don't bother spending 5 minutes to do stuff like remove clutter from the photo, close the toilet seat (a favourite of my other half's) , come back on a sunny day if it is overcast, put away the washing up rather than leave it on the side, remove the magnets from the fridge , straighten out the bed linen. It's not a period property thing, I see it as lazy lazy stuff that makes a big first impression difference

Some of this is the client (seller's) fault, but the agent is supposed to be the professional here.

-Steve

 

[mims&pip]

Totally agree with steveb, and whilst LadyA is right in saying that 99% of the associated carp will leave with the vendor, it's surprising how many buyers cannot see beyond it :roll:

Our last EA down in Wiltshire employed a professional photographer - as I believe many now do - who took some extremely decent pics of our house......although I confess to being mildly obsessive when it comes to presenting a house for sale - but I refuse to declutter by hiding our numerous *collections* of period *stuff* away, preferring to leave them in their carefully curated positions :wink:

I personally would much rather see a home presented as such, particularly an interesting period one (although I'm unlikely to be looking for anything other than this!), with all its history - and that includes artwork, antiques, objet d'art - in situ, as opposed to having been decluttered to within an inch of its life complete with magnolia-itis *

The only downside to using their photographer was that you were limited to using a maximum of eight pics, which may be fine for a smaller home, but would be less than ideal if selling a huge pile. A house such as ours with fourteen rooms and large garden fell somewhere in the middle - I know some buyers prefer to see pics in advance of every room - so our EA was happy for us to provide additional pics (taken with a decent camera of course!) of any missing rooms we thought warranted being appended to the blurb......

The photographer also insisted in removing our cat from the line of fire of his camera as he feared he might put off the non-feline loving amongst our pool of buyers.....a step too far imho :shock:

It does never cease to amaze me the state some properties are presented to the open market in - I'm not suggesting a need for US style *staging*, although some argue that this is advantageous - and I appreciate that in the case of an elderly or deceased resident, it may not always be convenient to present the property in show-home condition......

Having had to sell my parents' house when they both unfortunately developed Dementia and required removing to a nursing home, I realise how difficult this position can be, yet the cynic in me will see a poorly presented home in which a relative has recently departed and see £ signs blinding the beneficiary to the obvious - that were the place decluttered somewhat, a higher sale price may well be achieved

Don't get me started on the open loo seat :lol:

Mims x

* I appreciate I'm in the minority here and even that Great High Priest of Interior Design, Laurence Llewellyn Bowen recently had to de-personalise his house that was refusing to sell by whipping out the magnolia paint :lol:

 

[malcolm]

I'm not surprised that Laurence Llewellyn Bowen needed to de-personalise in order to sell. His house was probably dark purple velvet. Magnolia can become a bit too much as well. I'm about 2/3 of the way of removing maybe 300 square metres of the stuff.

 

[xanthe]

Having sold 2 houses and bought 1 in the last 12 months I'm fairly up on such things.

I was amazed when the photographer for our properties told me that half the time owners weren't there when he did the shoot, nor did they make any attempt to present the house.

I'm probably overly picky plus husband is a semi professional photographer, but I stood over every shot, checked the image, moved things etc and asked for image veto. Even extracted a promise that if I didn't like theirs I could send my own. Chap did a pretty good job.

With this house, there were 24 images and they were spectacular for an EA - we even asked for high res copies!

My parents are currently selling their G2 listed property and have just appointed a new agent. I don't dare tell them how awful the photos are.

Pets in EA pics... after the 7 felines here I can appreciate how some may be put off by even one!

 

[xanthe]

Sticking stuff in storage is a must - half our contents disappeared for 6 months. Amazing how much of it we didn't miss!

Also the majority of people cannot visualise and if you can it's hard to see why others can't. People cannot comprehend that there is a lovely room beneath the leopard print curtains and gold sofa. Hence why bland really does work.

 

[wobs]

I think it was Penners that put this blog here originally:
http://terriblerealestateagentphotos.com/

However, the following post is one I submitted from Hull. A period property, but I don't think the neutral colour scheme helps it much:

http://terriblerealestateagentphotos.com/post/116403807736

 

[88v8]

Well, I won't say yet which set of pics I preferred... decluttering, yes we too had to put a lot of stuff in storage, mainly to finish the library, which was the ground floor of an extension we had built in 1991. I had never finished it, and the room became the parking place for ...stuff. It was quite large, about 12 x 15', but in the end there was just about space to open the door. Things certainly expand to fill the space available in our house. Come to that, three years after moving we are still renting two storage units, the cumulative cost of which far far exceeds the value of the contents, but that's another story.

I too contributed pics to the EA, mainly of the garden. It never occurred to me to veto or challenge their own pics even though those of the kitchen were very yellowy, although I did amend the description.

Mind you, decluttering can go too far. Want to knock 10% off the value of a house? Remove all the furniture. When I sold my parents' house, I made sure to 'dress' it, even to the extent of taking stuff there from our own house. The EA wanted the pics to reflect the rooms' purpose. In the dining room, we had to move the table away from the wall and lay it. People have no imagination, quoth he.

Ivor

Edit: Dang! Terrible addition to the sites I have to keep an eye on Love the laconic commentary.

 

[mims&pip]

Ooh yes, Xanthe and Ivor.....we did the storage unit thing too :roll:

Two years prior to selling our last house we had cleared my parents' house - and yes, we presented that one for sale with furniture et al in situ - and had since then been renting a storage unit (at £120 per month) to house their stuff. The two attic bedrooms in our own house were full of stock from our business and general carp as we had demolished the carport (used as a storage facility by the POs) and whilst there was *some* loft space, it was pretty minuscule compared to the amount of rubbish (or should that read mementoes?) that we possess.

Our EA suggested that the attic floor was letting down the rest of our immaculately presented and sympathetically restored period home and that we should be dressing the two larger spaces as bedrooms instead of just the one at present. This entailed moving DH's office into the tinier space between the two main attic rooms......which itself resulted in a trip to the dreaded IKEA for smaller office furniture and rugs etc, a skip for the old stuff - 10 year old PC World long past its best - and some more eBay shopping to furnish the newly created bedroom as well as plenty of period white paint :roll:

It also meant increasing the size of storage we required, although once we had gone through everything with a fine tooth comb we only needed to increase the size (and monthly outlay) slightly

As our current house has a large(ish) garage, we were able to transfer all the stored stuff (having first whittled it down some more) into that, thus we no longer have the storage unit fees each month.....the downside being we can't use the garage for its intended purpose :lol:

Xanthe, I can quite see how seven cats would be off putting in EA pics - not least to someone with your DH's issues :wink: - and agree they (and other pets) are probably best left out of the photographer's line of fire :lol:

Mims x