People ask this the week before, and they ask it as though there is a checklist that applies to every house. There is not, because the answer depends on what your house does badly in a photograph, and that is specific to the house. But there is a short list that is true almost everywhere, and a longer list of things sellers spend money on that the camera never sees.
The short answer
Remove things, fix light, and clean glass. Nearly everything else is either invisible in a photograph or better spent elsewhere.
The night before is too late
Whatever is going to be decluttered has to leave the house, not move to the garage or the basement, because both of those get photographed too. That takes longer than anyone plans for. Two weeks is realistic for a house that has been lived in for twenty years. A Saturday is not.
What actually shows up in a photograph
- Surfaces. A clear counter reads as space. A counter with six items on it reads as a small kitchen.
- Light. Dead bulbs, mismatched color temperature and half the lamps off make good rooms look grey.
- Glass. Windows, mirrors, shower doors and the oven front. All of it photographs.
- Cords. They are invisible to you and extremely visible in a wide angle frame.
- Scale. One oversized piece of furniture can make a well proportioned room look cramped.
- The yard line. Where the mulch stops and the lawn starts is most of what a front exterior is.
The rooms that get skipped every time
The laundry room. The garage. The utility side of the basement. The space behind the door in the primary bedroom where the exercise equipment lives. Buyers look at all of them, and they are the rooms sellers stop seeing after the first year in a house.
Pets are the other one. Bowls, beds, crates and the yard. Not because anything is wrong with them, but because they photograph as clutter and they remove a certain kind of buyer before that buyer ever stands in the room.
What not to spend money on
Do not start a project in the four weeks before listing. A kitchen partially refreshed photographs worse than a dated kitchen that is clean and consistent, and a project running behind schedule will hold the house off the market during the exact window you chose to be on it.
Do not repaint the whole interior on the theory that it helps. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it is several thousand dollars spent on a thing the photograph would not have shown. That is a conversation to have in front of the house rather than in the abstract.
Why I would rather see it first
When I scan a house I am walking every room with a measuring device, which is the opposite of walking through admiring it. That is when the four inch hallway and the step down into the sunroom and the bedroom that is really an office show up. Those are the things worth deciding about before the camera comes, not after a buyer finds them on a second showing.
The part I will not answer
Whether a specific improvement returns its cost at resale is not a question I will give you a number for, because the honest answer varies by house and by street and anyone quoting you a national percentage is quoting an average of houses that are not yours. What a contractor will charge belongs to the contractor. Whether improvement spending affects your basis when you sell belongs to your CPA, and it is worth asking before you spend, not after.
How the house is measured, drawn and shown once it is ready is on the listing marketing page, and the wider question of whether to sell at all is on the right-sizing page.
This note is general guidance about preparing a home for photography. It is not tax advice, and what any particular improvement costs or returns depends on your house and your market.