For months now we’ve been offering prospective buyers the chance to view properties online, including with video tours hosted by our vendors. It’s a great way for interested buyers to ask questions and look at the property as if they were walking around in person and it’s proven to be a big hit with buyers and vendors alike.
- Preparation
Imagine that you are preparing for an actual face-to-face viewing, your property will be clean, decluttered, and well lit. Think about each space and how it looks to potential buyers and don’t forget about the outdoor spaces. You want it to look like a home that potential buyers picture themselves moving in to.
- Plan your route
From a health and safety point of view this makes sense, plan where you’re going to walk and ensure there’s nothing blocking your path.
From a filming point of view you don’t necessarily need to show every room of the house, you want to focus on the best parts of your property and by skipping the odd room you will get a bit more time to do that.
- Focus on features
After planning your route to focus on the best spaces in your property, go one further and give time to the strongest features within those spaces:
- Have you got a unique tiled floor?
- Are there any period features?
- Is there a nice view from windows?
- Do you have a generous sized en-suite with a stylish freestanding bath?
Remember to give time to the outside as well, both front and back. If your property has some serious curb appeal or is a suntrap in summer, make sure you get the most out of it. With the restricted movement measures in place, interest in outdoor space has skyrocketed so giving a good account of your garden could make a big difference in the interest in your property right now.
- Get the camera right
These days the camera on your smartphone or tablet are more than capable of capturing high-quality video footage. Make sure you use the right camera on your phone or tablet – there’s normally a forward facing one for selfies and video calls and a more powerful one on the back of the device – this is the one to use for your property video.
Record your video with your camera in landscape, or in other words hold your camera horizontally. This gives your camera the widest angle to fit in as much of the rooms as possible. Keeping the camera at eye level held out in front of you will mimic physically walking around your property for the viewer and will also look more professional.
- Lighting
This is important, especially when conducting a digital viewing. Your house could normally be bright and airy, but a dark video will send alarm bells to potential buyers. If you can wait for a bright day before you record your video and before filming turn on all the lights and make sure all the curtains and blinds are open.
Film the outside and inside in separate parts so that your camera automatically adjusts to the light before you hit record. Stepping inside from a bright sunny day even into the lightest property will take the camera by surprise.
- Commentary
Another consideration is commentary. Our advice is to leave this to your agent as they may want to add a voiceover. Furthermore, if you make a mistake while recording you will have to go back to the start and record all over again.
- Practice makes perfect
Record your videos as you planned and then watch them back. Think about how the video looks to a potential buyer – are you walking too fast? Is it too light or too dark? Did you spend enough time in a particular room?
Have another try and look back at your video again, have you fixed the issues from before? Try and perfect the video before you send it to your agent.
