FTB annoyed with EAs and their photos!

Moonraker71

I'm hopefully putting my place on the market soon and I'm really considering not allowing wide-angle shots to be used, as I do think they are really misleading. I don't want people to come here and then be really disappointed. If you're pretty savvy and take a good look at the floor plan (and perhaps compare the given room sizes to your current place) then maybe you'll take these photos with a pinch of salt. But first time buyers (my market) with less experience might not be so savvy. In a way, I'd rather use ordinary - but still high quality - photos and manage people's expectations.

Dan-Dan

but you do need the photos to grab attention but also to not show `too` much detail , because those things are also what attract and scare off FTB`s

Fire_Fox

sterl1ng wrote: »

Fire Fox - this is my 4th date! Its going terrible and I'm starting to lack faith in EAs:(

Then that is where you went wrong, never trust an estate agent they work for the vendor not the buyer.

sterl1ng wrote: »

can I just say on floorplans, its hard to comprehend until you see something in the 'flesh' on how it looks. The floorplan acatually gave impression it was big too but really it wasn't that great but really i was flabbergasted on how the living room was made to look much wider than it was. All this has done to me is be more dubious now when looking.

If I could just take me current flat to this new area with another bedroom i'd be happy!

Which is why viewings are important! But to get an idea of the space know the dimensions of the rooms in your current home and perhaps in your parents home and make comparisons. You could even draw up a scale plan and show it to estate agents, let them know what you like about your flat and they might just call you first when something is new in.

If the flat or house you view is cluttered and seems small look up at the ceiling, that often is the same as the floor space. Don't let furniture cloud your judgement, making something appear larger or smaller than it is. Many buyers cannot see past decor or furnishings, if you can you can be the one to snap up a bargain.

*mudangel*

Trouble is Moonraker, if I did that (when everyone else uses wide-angle shots), I'd be worried about not even getting people through the door.

I do think that other things can help make rooms look larger. We painted everything in neutral colours, put some mirrors up and got rid of all clutter.

Dunno about everyone else, but when I visit a property I always try to bear in mind that it will be smaller than I think.

(And don't you just love it when the toilet lid looks about 4 feet long?)

sterl1ng

DRP wrote: »

Sometimes actually viewing a place gives as much a false impression of size as the photos! The way a house is dressed - minimalist, small sofa, small table, small beds etc can mislead (hence why it is a good idea to de-clutter when selling)

it is a good idea to compare dimensions of each room with where you currently live so you can 'virtually' see how your own furniture/surfboard/harley-davidson/lifestyle fit (or not) into the new place...

Quite a few times this has helped us - houses that on viewing seemed spacious and much bigger than our own, in fact turn out to be only marginally bigger when directly comparing room sizes :rotfl:

I actually have a mock floorplan of my current residence, where I measured each room as then it gave me an idea on the set up so when I look at floorplans and the dimensions of places I compare that to my current floorplan. Irony is the dimenions of this place was bigger than my current place but I didn't feel that at all. Maybe because the kitchen was right next to living room PLUS thsi place was first floor so didn't give feeling of space like my ground floor place.

I did actaully start to think to look at first floor places and I suppose that's why i still gave this place a chance but really what it has done is make my miind up on ONLY going for ground floor apartment as then everything is wonderfully connected.

Zogger

The problem is you want to give people an overview of the room from the pictures. Realistically, the only way to do this in most house, without taking the roof & upper stories off the top of the house and renting a helicopter, is to use a wide angle lens. Until estate agents start doing some kind of 3d laser scan I would rather have pictures that show more of the room than see a tiny bit of the room - provided a floorplan with measurements is provided. There is one estate agent locally that clearly doesn't have a wide angle lens and all their adverts have pictures of rooms taken through doors and pictures of the view out of the window. This is far less useful to me.

What I don't like is those 3d floorplans with fake furniture in them, because the furniture in the floorplan is always smaller than the furniture in real life. That actually is misleading...

Hermoine

Estate agents also have their own individual styles of describing/presenting property - and if you look at several properties from the same estate agent you will get an idea of how this relates to reality. I liked the description of my flat as "light-filled and spacious" until I realised that the estate agent had described several other flats in exactly the same way! It also sometimes pays to persevere through poor descriptions, and get your information in other ways. In the place I'm hoping to move to there is one estate agent who puts their entire description in one paragraph, jammed with information - which is really hard to read - and doesn't do floor plans. Since I've walked round most of the town I know what areas/streets I want to live in, so if they have a house to sell on one of those streets I wouldn't be deterred by the details. But, yes, there will also always be idiot estate agents who didn't listen to what you tell them, and send you off to see flats without gardens despite the fact that you said you only wanted a flat with a garden!

Moonraker71

*mudangel* and zogger - I do agree. I'm still not exactly sure what to do. I'm fortunate in that although I only have a 1 bed flat, all the rooms are very large, so even if I take photos with an ordinary lens, you can still get all the room in nicely. But if I take them with a wide-angle lens they look like a stately home!! (Except for the bathroom where I agree a wide-angle would be better.) But I know what you mean, I've seen photos that only show the corner of the room or a bit of bed with a window next to it, etc - and they're worse than useless.

Goldiegirl

sterl1ng wrote: »

Why is it when you look at photos of properties they most of time look big then the actual property!

I saw a property friday evening which I was quite interested (up until the night before when the agent had told me it was a ground flr BUT in fact it was first flr!). So I went to take a look and if I'm being honest it wasn't cracked up to be. I was really disappointed and came a long way to see this place. I did say to agent after that I I wasn't interested given terrible access to garden but also I didn't feel that it was right for me, especially as it was on first floor when originally I was told it was ground. I didn't make huge song and dance about this but I have to say I do feel rather miffed.

I feel now that whenver I look online that those photos will just make the place look bigger than it actually is, someone needs to call trades description lot!

Signed
FTB, still in search of 'the one'

As they are trying to sell the property they want to present it in it's best possible light.

They aren't going to present the property as a poky airless cupboard, they wouldn't get any viewings at all.

I think people need to view the property, and take the estate agents particulars with a pinch of salt!

ValHaller

Sooner or later as a viewer, you tune in to the EA photos anyway. A quick look at google maps and the street view can help you too.