Take Your Best Shot

Many sellers and their real estate agents use cell phone cameras to take the photos that will show up in every real estate search for your property, no matter where people search for it around the world.

But magazine-quality photos are created by photographers that are experts at capturing the best of real estate interiors and exteriors. So the wow factor that briefly takes your breath away and makes you skip work the next day to see that house for sale -- that doesn't happen by accident.

Sellers have one chance to introduce their home to the public. Photos of unwashed dishes in a sink, dirty laundry spread across an unmade bed, or even refrigerators filled with family photos -- this is how we live, not how we sell. Shadowy photographs or pictures of furniture rather than features can cause buyers to pass on your home with disinterest, not because your home isn't worthy, but because your home wasn't reflected in its best light. And those buyers aren't coming back.

Professional photos are part of the three-step process of staging your property for sale. They present the most attractive and still accurate version of your home's lovely assets. As a seller, you want to do as much as you can before your listing goes live, to increase the possibility for less days on market and multiple satisfactory offers. The less you do to prepare it for sale, the longer those days on market continue ticking upward. Or worse, you have to remove the listing and re-list again later, for less.

Few sellers regret the extra effort and cost on the front end when they are signing the closing documents and handing over the keys to the new owners. You don't want to be a seller pacing the floor wondering if you could have done a better job preparing and marketing your property with spectacular photography, while your real estate agent is hosting the next in a series of open houses without successful offers.

So hire a professional as part of staging your property for sale, to enter into the home sellers' beauty pageant. The photographer can take your home's best shot, while you reap the rewards.