Plain and simple – the absolute best way to get prospective tenants interested in your Winter Park Rental Home is to take quality, useful pictures to post in your internet ads. Exterior photos of rental houses are the cornerstone of good marketing. If you’ve ever bought or rented a home before you’ve probably noticed the large variation in picture quality relating to listing advertisements. How, you may ask, do some agents and property managers take amazing, even artistic, photos while others appear to be taken out of focus with a disposable camera and hastily thrown online? What separates good photos from bad ones, and how do you make sure that you take good ones?
We will write about house photography often on the Central Florida Property Management blog so make sure to save us to your RSS feed for regular updates. For this post, we will focus solely on exterior photos of rental houses, and specifically on getting the exterior in the right condition to be photographed.
Exterior photos are arguably the most important. Much like people do not want to drive a car that they don’t think looks good (talk to Pontiac about the sales of their Aztek), people don’t want to live in a house that they don’t find visually appealing. The purpose of taking pictures is to try to get people to come see the house in person. If the picture of the house makes it look unappealing, fewer people will choose to look at or even consider living in it. That’s not what you want.
Even in today’s digital sea, curb appeal is the name of the game, and curb appeal in the 21st century starts with high-quality photos of a home’s exterior. And while it may seem like common sense, one of the most glaring errors made by many novices is to fail to ‘tidy up’ the front of the house BEFORE taking pictures. Prospective tenants don’t want to be reminded of day-to-day chores such as taking out the garbage and mowing the lawn and they may not have the same taste in yard ornaments as the homeowner or current tenant. So clean it up!
On picture day, stash the garbage cans, toys, bikes, yard tools, and pool cleaning equipment out of site and remove any dead potted plants and other types of distractions. Sweep or blow off the sidewalks, entry way, patio, driveway and other hard surfaces. Remove all extraneous items and anything that screams ‘work!’ Basically, you want to do as much as you can, within reason, to make the exterior home look as good as new.
Exterior Photos of Rental Houses
Lastly, make sure there are no cars in the picture. Prospective tenants want to picture THEIR car in the driveway, not someone else’s. Keep the driveway empty. If you live on a street that allows street parking, politely ask your neighbors to move their cars. If that’s not possible, do your best to wait and take the photo until the cars are gone.
If you don’t want to have to worry about taking great photos of your rental property, nor all the other small headaches that go along with being a landlord, you should consider a property management company. We’re located in Central Florida and have specialized in Orlando property management for years – let us hear from you if you have questions!