If you are selling your home, you want to attract as many potential buyers to your property as possible. The more buyers that have interest in your home, the more likely someone will submit an offer. How can you compel would-be buyers to visit, and fall in love with your home?

It’s all about the photos. According to the National Association of Realtors®, 92% of home buyers begin their search online. Many Realtors® use smart phones or point and click cameras to take photos of their listings. At the Eric Stewart Group, we have always used professional photographers to showcase our listings. Professional photographers use optimal lighting and a wide camera lens to capture and highlight the best features of a home. Professional online photos that make your house shine will generate more clicks, and more requests to tour your home in person.

Wanting to be a step ahead of the rest of the industry, we are excited to announce that we have recently enhanced how we market our listings to home buyers searching online. Partnering with TruPlace, a leading provider of real estate photography, we will now provide interactive floor plans for each of our listings.

So, what does this mean? How will this enhancement benefit sellers and buyers? Read on for more information.

The Benefits of Interactive Floor Plans to Sellers and Buyers

Professional photographers from TruPlace will take high-resolution photos of your home including the interior, exterior, and local neighborhood amenities. If you will be listing your home during the winter months, we will arrange to have exterior photos taken beforehand (during the previous spring/summer/early fall), so that your photos show your home’s curb appeal at its best, with a green lawn and attractive landscaping. What if it’s a cloudy day when the exterior shots are to be taken? No problem. TruPlace offers Blue Sky technology to turn those cloudy or gray skies into a bright, sunny blue day.

By incorporating interactive floor plans with these high-end photos, buyers will have 24/7 access to a virtual open house. Room dimensions and square footage are provided for each room in the floor plan. When you hover over a particular room with your mouse, that room’s photo will pop up (see example below). Essentially, buyers will be able to visualize the layout and space in your home before they even walk through the front door. Delivering such a strong first impression of your home online will attract more potential buyers, and thus more interest, which will result in selling your home faster and for top dollar. To get your home picture perfect, check out our previous blog on How To Prepare Your Home For Real Estate Photos.

Why Interactive Floor Plans are Better than 3-D Virtual Tours

Some real estate photography companies are now offering 3-D virtual tours of homes. Why would we choose to provide interactive floor plans on our listings rather than this emerging technology? Because…the technology is still emerging. 3-D real estate tours are still rather clunky and can be frustrating to navigate. Due to the limited navigation of these tours, they may cause buyers to actually click off a listing, thus spending less time viewing and becoming interested in that particular property. Once this technology matures and becomes an asset to a listing rather than a potential liability, we may become a proponent of using 3-D tours.

Get Additional Inside Scoop on How to Sell Your Home for Top Dollar

Are you thinking of selling your home next spring or summer, or even 1-2 years out? It’s never too soon to start planning for your home sale. We invite you to join our upcoming seminars where Eric Stewart will dispense timely information on how to sell your home for maximum profit and answer your most pressing questions in a Q&A. Eric will cover:

• When is the best time to sell your home
• Tips on decluttering and sorting through your possessions
• What home improvements provide the best rate of return
• Strategies on pricing your home
• How to attract the most buyers…and much more!

Get Eric’s insightful tips from 30 years in real estate by listening in on his radio show every Sunday Morning on WMAL or Reserving your Spot for one of his FREE Seminars!