Photography is so important when selling anything online and it’s no different when it comes to selling properties. Your property is being judged in seconds by potential buyers visiting Rightmove and it doesn’t take much to make someone scroll past your listing. You should always make sure to have at least 7 images on your listing and ensure your best photos are shown first. Follow our advice below and it could give you a better chance of receiving enquiries.

 

  1. Make a plan

    You should aim to take at least one photo for each room of your property, including an exterior photo of the front, back and any additional buildings such as a garage.

  2. Think like a buyer

    Before you even get the camera out, imagine it’s not your house, be critical and put yourself in the mind of a potential buyer. Is the room tidy? Does it feel cluttered? Can you move items out the room when taking photos?
    In the case of property photography, less really is more. So, clear the newspapers from your coffee table, make the bed, tidy the kitchen counters and even set the table for dinner. For the purposes of photography, it’s not your house, it’s the buyers.

  3. Choose your timing carefully

    If you can avoid it, don’t take your photos on grey or rainy days, especially if your property is in a country usually famous for it’s clear blue skies. The best times for indoor photography are mid-morning and mid-afternoon where it’s bright enough for good exposure but not to bright to produce harsh shadows or reflections through your environment. Shooting the exterior of your property is more forgiving, try a range of shots from late afternoon where the sun gives a warm glow.

  4. Great photos need good lighting

    Open the curtains or blinds and make the room as bright as you can. Try to use natural sunlight where possible. If you’re shooting with a phone make sure to tap the darkest area of the screen to adjust the exposure, if you don’t do this your camera might make the scene darker to compensate for brighter parts of the image such as windows.
    Also if you have lots of sunlight available, angle the camera away from the window, this will allow you to get the most light into your image without causing glare or washing out your images. If your phone/camera has a HDR mode, this would be an ideal time to use it.

  5. Sell the lifestyle

    Nobody knows your property location better than you. If you mention an “award winning beach 5 minutes walk away” go out there and take a photo. This is your chance to show off the benefits of living in the location and all that it has to offer. You’re not just selling the property, you’re selling the lifestyle.

  6. Edit your photos before uploading to Rightmove

    Your photos should of course be a true and accurate reflection of the property for sale, however you should check each photo carefully to see if it could benefit from having the brightness, contrast or saturation increased slightly. Both iPhone and Android devices have editing tools built in but use them sparingly to avoid over-editing.

If it doesn’t look right…

If the images you have uploaded look ok on your computer but are being displayed upside down or on its side on Rightmove, it is likely that the device used to take the photos was not positioned correctly. To fix this, you must open the original image on your computer, make sure its orientation is correct and click on ‘save as’. Then save the new image under a different name on your computer and upload it to your advert again.

If after taking these steps the orientation of the image is still incorrect on your advert, please contact us on private.seller@rightmove.co.uk

Terms

HDR (High Dynamic Range) – HDR is a setting that takes a series of photos in quick succession at different settings, capturing very bright areas and very dark areas of a photo and merging them to generate a balanced image. You should use this setting when there is a strong contrast of brightness and darkness.

Exposure – Adjusts how much light is being captured by your cameras sensor. This is normally managed automatically by your camera but can be overridden for example on phone you can tap the screen or on a camera look for a setting usually labelled ‘EV +/-‘.