Why the most important part of your listing could be costing you money!
What is the most important part of selling a house? The listing. According to the National Association of Realtors, 95% of people used online tools in the process of looking for a home. That means in the vast majority of cases, if an agent is going to sell a home, they have to list it online. The first thing that people notice when they look at an online listing are the photos of the home. In fact, the same study from the National Association of Realtors found that 87% of homebuyers listed photos as the most useful thing when determining which homes to consider. While there are many factors that go into deciding which home is the right fit for any given buyer, the photos on the listing are the biggest factor that helps a buyer determine if a house is worthy of further consideration.
Why is the junk hauling guy talking so much about listing photos? Because after poor quality photography, too much clutter or junk in the photos is one of the top reasons listing photos flop. This is where a skilled junk removal crew comes in. In this article we will discuss the various ways that hiring a junk removal company can help increase the sale price of a home. While the major focus will be on making sure to capture the perfect listing photos, we will also discuss how a professional junk removal company can help those selling to investors get more cash for their property.
The answer is simple and exactly what you expect. Accurate, high quality photos serve as a great representation of a property from which a buyer can make a decision without having to see the house in person. A buyer can rule a house out of the process by noticing deal breaking issues in a photo. Likewise, they can decide that a house is a strong contender on their search due to seeing desired features in listing photos. The key function of listing photos is for buyers to be able to see the house for what it really is. The only problem is that when buyers see clutter in the photos, they are not so sure what the house really is anymore. The clutter could be hiding a fatal flaw of the house, it could be misrepresenting how big or small a space is, or it could make the backyard look totally unlivable. When you consider the fact that buyers spend 60% of their time on a listing looking at photos, it is critical to get it right.
A perfect listing photo has numerous aspects, especially if you ask a real estate photographer. In my opinion however, the perfect real estate photo is one that clearly captures a house for what it is at its very best. The most frustrating thing for a buyer is a house that looks great in its photos, but doesn’t even seem like the same house in person. The most frustrating thing for a seller is a beautiful and charming house that looks unattractive online and gets no foot traffic or interest. Hiring a professional to capture the best features of a house in the most realistic way is a key aspect of properly listing a house. Aside from a poor quality photo, the factor that most detracts from a well represented house is clutter and junk. When listing photos are filled with junked up photos prospective buyers can not see the house for what it really is which leads them to be less likely to add that house to their “for further investigation” list.
It is pretty simple! A good junk removal company knows how to work with a seller and a listing agent to make sure that all unnecessary clutter is removed from a property before listing photos are taken. The most common places that need cleaning are the garage, the basement, and the back yard. The main reason these are the most common clean up places is two-fold. One, these three areas collect more miscellaneous items than anywhere else in a house. The garage, the basement, and the back yard (or as we call them, the junk trifecta), are the most likely place for old tools, dilapidated yard furniture, brush piles, old building materials, broken furniture, and the pile of things I ‘might need eventually’ end up. The second reason these areas are critical for a pre-listing clean up is because these are often the most wide open and potential filled spaces on any given property. The best way to show all of this highly sought after open space is to photograph it without any unnecessary clutter in order to highlight all of the potential those spaces hold.
Other common items that should be removed before a listing photo are any dilapidated sheds, pools, or hot tubs. Unless they are 100% functional, most agents recommend removing them so that a potential buyer will not ask for funds to have them removed in the future. Furniture items that are no longer in good shape should also be removed before listing photos are taken. While not every house needs to go through a professional staging process, it is always a good idea to make the most of the furniture and decorations that are already in the home. Removing broken or shabby items before taking listing photos is a critical step in the process of putting the homes best foot forward.
After several years as a junk hauling professional, I thought I understood the importance of having clutter free listing photos pretty well. My thoughts on the matter were only solidified when it was time for me to buy my first home. My wife and I found out we were expecting our first child in May of 2021 and we knew we needed to move somewhere other than a one bedroom apartment as soon as possible. We began our house hunt in September of 2021 and my wife began to scour the internet for any house near us that would even be remotely workable. She and I together looked at well over 200 property listings online. Many of those listings did not work for us for whatever reason. A few made it onto our ‘must see in person list’ with ease. But there were a couple of houses that would have been strong candidates for us on the basis of price, location, space, and features. The only problem is that they were full of junk. While junk doesn’t bother me at all, I make my living dealing with it, it did reduce my confidence greatly in the quality of the house because I could not really see the house for what it was. Additionally, my wife was not interested in moving into a house that had obviously been poorly taken care of, or so she thought. While reflecting on my personal home buying experience, I realized that if even a professional junk man was taken aback from junky listing photos, how much more would those photos turn off your regular every day home buyer.
The other way junk removal companies can help is when it comes to selling to investors. Sometimes a property is in bad enough shape that no DIY-fixer-upper will have the time for it. At that point, it goes to the investor market. Investors make their money by buying houses no one else wants and turning them into habitable homes again. The biggest attraction of investor buyers is that the seller normally does not have to do anything to the house, the investor will buy it as is. Investors are looking to buy houses as inexpensively as possible in order to have enough margin to sell them at a profit, or minimize costs as they add that property to their rental portfolio. If a house is filled with clutter, they will often want money off the price in order to deal with that headache.
In my experience, having the junk removed from a property before the investors buy is advantageous in two ways. Firstly, junk removal is the easiest of the home services to have work on a property that is being vacated. There are no lengthy supply delays, no power or water outages, no need to pick new materials or anything like that. Most houses can be cleaned out in one to two days with little to no involvement from the property owner other than unlocking the doors. Secondly, because junk removal can be such a headache for investors and such a daunting task for homeowners, investors will often ask for more money off of the property than it would take to have it cleaned up.
In my 8 years of junk hauling experience, I have met many property investors from small one man operations to large corporations. They both have one thing in common. Dealing with trash is their least favorite part of the restoration process. I have worked for both sellers and investors in these situations and it is always the case that even the toughest, most capable home restorer does not want to deal with the trash. There have been several times that agents have brought our team in to complete a $2,500 clean out in order to gain $5,000 or $6,000 on the sale price of the house when going to an investor. Due to the fact that junk removal is such an easy process for the homeowner, it is a no brainer to go ahead and have that task completed. Additionally, at Up Up and Away we offer financing on projects over $1,000 so that clients going through a property sale do not have to pay up front for their clean out services, but can pay after they close and get the check from the sale of their property. In my experience, having a junk removal company clean a property prior to selling to investors is great step for those who want to get a little extra money out of their property without a lot of extra work.
Watch the video below to see a major property transformation for a property being sold to an investor!
It is my opinion that junk in the listing photos for a property are one of the biggest things keeping potential buyers away from even considering a listing. Given that 95% of people are looking for their new home online, and that they spend 60% of that online time looking at photos, it is critical to get the photos right. If junky photos scared away a professional junk man and his wife, how many more potential buyers are turning away from listings with junky photos. Additionally, removing junk from a house before selling to an investor can also lead to an increased sale price for the property owner. That is why I recommend to hire a junk removal specialist before listing any home. If you do so, it will lead to more online traffic, in person traffic, more offers, higher offers from both buyers and investors, and at the end of the day more commission for you as an agent. Sounds like a win, win, win to me!
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