With many home showings going digital during COVID-19, you should learn how to make your listing stand out online. There’s going to be a lot less crowded open houses to sell your home. With many people staying home, online for-sale listings have become more important than ever, and it starts with increasing your home’s screen appeal.
You also have to make sure your home photographs well with the layout. Consider your furniture placement and take some test photos. If you’re doing a video tour, do a video chat walkthrough to see if it flows. You don’t want to be tripping over an ottoman while doing a live tour.
Lastly, clean and dust everything. Replace lightbulbs so the rooms are bright. Consider white LED bulbs as opposed to the yellow tinge that traditional light bulbs emit.
Stage your home
The first step here is serious cleanup. Declutter. Put away all the kids’ and pets’ toys and box up the picture frames, mementos and magazines. You don’t want to remove the personality from your home, but you want it to be neutral for potential buyers.
Consider virtual staging
If your current home is empty, you have some options. You can leave it empty, but staged homes sell faster. You can purchase a few key pieces of furniture to show the scale of a room (couch for a living room, bed for a bedroom, etc). Lastly you can try virtual staging, which digitally adds furnishing to your home. It’s not as daunting as it sounds, and it can make a home very attractive.
Online sharing
There are countless ways to showcase your home online to generate more engagement, even when having an agent or professional services doing the legwork is not an option. Consider video tours, taking a free online photography course, or engaging with 3D online tours.