It is clear to us all how important video is to tell a story and reach your audience, but you may not know the amazing facts how much a great video impacts a sale of a property.

How important are real estate videos?

• 96% of buyers find videos important when making a buying decision
• 76% of marketers plan to add video to their site as a higher priority than social media
• 52% of buyers say it gives them the confidence they need to take their buying decision

Hire a professional

Videographers are often working as freelance and therefore already work at reasonable fees. Before you select a freelance professional you best check his references and if you like their previous work you should engage in negotiation talks. But not everyone has the budget for that, and some properties may not even need one; if they are too small for example.

Use the right equipment

If you decide to take videos yourself it starts with the right equipment. Make sure you have a good enough camera to give you the quality you want. If you want to film with your phone, take a few video shots of different parts of your house and then watch them and see how they look. If they are not clear or blur even, you may wish to upgrade your equipment or get back to point 1 above.
If you go ahead and film yourself make sure you have a tripod and a gimbal at your disposal. They will help you greatly to assure smooth pictures.

Setup each room before a shoot

The quality of your camera and the person behind it is only as good as to what is in front of them. This means you should always have a clean, tidy and well-organized space before taking any videos. The better your space looks, the more intriguing videos you will be able to take. Make it look warm, cozy and comfortable to assure best impressions and pay attention to little details; such as your cat hiding under the sofa in the dark. When buying a home more than 40% of Gen Z buyers and 39% of millennials find it important to be staged. Don’t overdo it but stick to the important basics, such as:

• matching towels in bathroom, nicely folded and hung up over the rail
• put up a nice table setting on the dining table with place mats, cutlery, fabric napkins, plates, glasses and flowers
• place a good-looking fruit bowl with fresh fruits on your kitchen counter
• assure bedsheets are smooth and without wrinkles when making the bed
• add a few matching pillows on the couch or place a rug at the entrance
• rearrange furniture to create a better flow if need be
• switch on the fire place if you have one

Consider your lighting

Lighting is one of the most important aspects of any video. The perfect light can make or break a video, regardless how beautiful the scenery is or how professional the person behind the camera. Assure your videos have the same consistent lighting throughout all the scenes you are taking. Here are some tips:

• Determine if the lights are better switched on or off. Take a few trial shots to find out what looks better. If you are taking photos of dark rooms, you may need some artificial light to brighten up the space. While in a bright room will give you consistent light throughout the space.
• Make sure your lights are cleaned and the lightbulbs are the same. How often have we put in a lightbulb simply because we didn’t just have another. It gave us light, but it wasn’t the same as the rest. While in daily life this may not bother much, it does not look professional on video.

Regard the weather

Because lighting is so important when taking videos, the weather plays a big role in it. For example, a rainy day is darker than a sunny day and allows for less light into your space. While this may be good to create warm and cozy shots, it may not be great when taking videos to sell your property.

Position of your camera

When taking videos, it is important you position the lens at the height at which a person would see the space as if they were walking in. This means in front of your head. Often we see videos filmed from abdominal height or much above the head. And while some of these techniques may be good for photography, it isn’t for videos. You want to give a sense of the space as if a viewer was walking into it.

Natural camera movement

To give a perfect feel of the space it is important to move the camera naturally. If you own a gimble or something even more advanced, you will have the right stability to do so. When you take shots of a room for example, it is good if you are moving into the room and then slowly start to turn your camera to show the full space. The speed of movement is not that important as you can edit this later, BUT it is crucial that you keep the speed steady for ease of editing.

Multiple takes

When taking video shots, we often think they look good on the screen of a camera, only to realize later they are not as perfect as we thought. Specially when we start editing and start seeing small details we don’t want to have in there. Therefore, it is important to take several shots of each angle and consider various angles of each room. This may sound like a painful undertaking, but it will make all the difference. You will most probably only choose one shot, but you have a lot more choice to assure the best possible shot is chosen for your video.

Edit

Editing is one of the most difficult parts and experts would give you a lot of different advice, which to most of us would sound like a language from another planet. So how then? It is a good start to work with a simple to use video editor. There are tons of great editing tools out there but most of them are too complicated to use or not sufficient for what you need. We at deehiy.com therefore recommend using Shotcut. It is a simple to use video editor and comes free. After a few trials and learning videos you will already be able to create stunning videos with this editor. You can download the editor at www.shotcut.org.

Order your shots naturally

While editing your video and putting clips together keep a simple and natural order of how you would see the house when walking into the door. This means you best start with some exterior shots and then move towards the entrance. Next show the entrance hall and spaces around it. If you have multiple floors in our property move up naturally and include one room after another. Unless your bathroom is an eye-catcher of its own you can avoid it. At the end of your video put a last few short clips of your property from the outside, zooming out.

Consider aerial photos

If you have a property with beautiful views or landscape, you may wish to consider aerial videos. This is best done with a drone and left to professionals. It has shown to have a positive impact if a video shows the full property with surrounding areas and increases chance to a wow-effect by potential buyers.

Consider appropriate timing

The average attention spans are only getting shorter. Therefore, try keeping your video between 3 – 4 minutes maximum. If your house is too big to put everything in this timeframe, consider shorter clips and show less of your property. Select only the biggest sales points and show them in your video.

Studies have shown how a good video can impact sales, any kind of sales. So, make this your top priority if you wish to sell your property swiftly.