How to prepare a house for listing photos

01

Start the day before, not the morning of

The single most common thing that costs a shoot is trying to do all of it in the hour before I ring the bell. Countertops get cleared into a pile on the dining table, and the dining table is in shot too.

Give yourself an evening. Nothing on this list is hard, but there is more of it than people expect, and rushing it shows in the photographs.

02

Clear the flat surfaces completely

Kitchen counters, bathroom vanities, nightstands, the top of the fridge. Not tidied. Empty. A buyer scrolling on their phone reads clutter as less space, and no amount of editing gets that back.

The exception is one deliberate object per surface, and only where a room would otherwise look staged to the point of being cold. A bowl of lemons on an island is fine. Six appliances, a knife block and a paper towel holder are not.

• Countertops: soap, sponges, dish racks, toasters, coffee makers away
• Bathrooms: everything off the vanity, toilet lids down, one folded towel per rail
• Fridge and any other surface: no magnets, no photos, no school schedules
• Bedside tables: chargers, glasses of water, books
• Floors: shoes, pet bowls, toys, laundry baskets
• Trash cans out of every room, including the bathrooms and the kitchen

03

Blinds open, fans off

Open every blind and pull back every curtain before I arrive. Natural light is what makes a room look like somewhere you would want to live, and a closed blind reads as a room with nothing worth seeing outside it. If a window looks onto something you would rather not show, tell me and I will frame around it.

Turn every ceiling fan off. A moving fan photographs as a blur of blades in the middle of the ceiling, and there is no fixing it after the fact. It is the single most common thing I have to ask for once I am already shooting.

04

Every light in the house works and matches

Switch on every lamp and fixture the night before and look for dead bulbs. Then look at their colour. A room with two warm bulbs and one daylight bulb photographs with a green cast on one wall, and correcting it costs quality in the file.

If you replace bulbs, match the temperature across the room. Soft white through the living spaces is the safe default in most desert homes.

05

The desert-specific things people forget

Pool surface, always. Skim it the morning of. A pool with leaves on it in a listing photo reads as neglected maintenance, which is exactly the wrong signal on a property where the pool is the selling point.

Then the patio: cushions on and squared up, umbrella open if it is not windy, hose coiled or hidden, and the barbecue cover either on properly or off entirely. Half-on looks abandoned.

Desert landscaping hides a surprising amount of blown debris against the base of walls and under shrubs. Ten minutes with a blower before I arrive makes the exterior frames noticeably cleaner.

06

Cars, bins and everything in the driveway

Cars out of the driveway and off the street directly in front of the house, including the neighbors' if you can ask politely. Bins around the side or in the garage.

This is the one item that most often forces a return visit, because a car in frame cannot be edited out honestly and a driveway is in almost every exterior shot. It is worth setting an alarm for.

07

What I would rather you left alone

Do not rearrange the furniture into what you think a photograph wants. Rooms read best when they look like the room they are, and I will move what needs moving on the day.

Do not deep clean the windows and skip the screens: a clean window behind a dusty screen photographs worse than both being ordinary. And do not repaint anything the week of the shoot unless it has time to fully cure and air out.