Preparing Your Sacramento Home for Professional Photography

All homes can benefit from preparing for professional photography.

My wish for all sellers is for them to properly prepare a Sacramento home for professional photography. Unfortunately, it’s not the way every Sacramento Realtor operates. You’ve still got the agents who don’t feel their low-end clients deserve professional photos. Or, worse, they think they are saving money by walking around the house shooting vertical photos with a cellphone, of all things. I’m not sure where the cut-off price point is with some agents. Probably under $500,000, would be my guess, or thereabouts. They just think anybody selling a regular home that is not a luxury home, well, it’s just not worth it for the agent to pay for professional photos.

I often wonder how their clients feel about that. They probably look at the agent’s website and see how some of the other homes looks spectacular while their home looks drab and dull. Oh, who am I kidding? Those clients don’t look at their agents websites or there would be some agents waking up to a rock thrown through their plate-glass window. If clients don’t demand equality and professional service, they probably won’t get it.

My belief is every client, I don’t care if it’s bare piece of land, deserves professional photos. I try to brief my clients before I arrive at their home with my photographer. Yes, even after all my decades in real estate, I still try to attend every photo shoot if I can. It’s not that I don’t trust my photographer, it’s that I am there to help the photographer move around stuff that sellers leave in peculiar places. They don’t see it because they’re too close to the subject at hand.

Here is what I tell my sellers prior to the photographer arriving and how to prepare a Sacramento home for professional photography:

1. Do not park in the driveway.  Do not park any vehicles in the driveway. No cars, bus, train, motorbike, tricycle.
2. Remove the trash receptacle from the kitchen. Take the trash with it.
3. Turn on all the lights, even the lights over the stove or under the microwave.
4. Open all blinds but leave the windows closed.
5. Clear everything off the kitchen counters, coffee pot and all. Everything. Except that bottle of Pinot, which you can give to me.
6. Hide the dog food bowls and kitty litter boxes and dog beds.
7. Close toilet seat lids.
8. Turn off all ceiling fans.
9. Make the beds.
10. Don’t leave dirty dishes in the sink.

You would think I would not have to tell people to clean up the house and put things away, but I do. If you are in a rush to prepare your Sacramento home for professional photography, just stick everything inside the garage. Buyers don’t spend a lot of time in the garage, and it’s a good place to stash extra furniture.

I recall a while back when I was shooting the home of a doctor in Campus Commons. When I was upstairs, the bed was made and everything was tidy. When I came back upstairs, he had pulled back the bedspread and dumped all of his dirty underwear from wherever he had been hiding it right in the middle of the bed. For photos! The bed looked a little lumpy as I smoothed the bedspread out the best I could, but I was NOT touching that pile.