How to market your house

Prepare before the camera comes out

• Declutter hard. Clear worktops, remove around a third of furniture and ornaments, and hide bins, cables, laundry and pet items.
• Deep clean, including windows, and air the house out.
• Depersonalise lightly: family photographs and fridge clutter distract from the room.
• Fix the small visible faults — chipped paint, a cracked tile, a sticking door.
• Tidy the front: cut back, sweep, move cars off the drive for the exterior shot.
• Stage the purpose of each room so a spare room reads as a bedroom or study, not storage.

Photography that gets clicks

Shoot on a bright day, ideally when the sun is on the front of the house for the exterior. Use landscape orientation throughout. Stand in a corner of each room, hold the camera at roughly chest height and keep verticals straight — tilting the camera makes walls lean and rooms look smaller.

Turn every light on, open blinds and curtains, and avoid using flash. Photograph the best rooms first and order the gallery the way a buyer would walk through: exterior, main reception, kitchen, other receptions, bedrooms, bathroom, garden.

Ten to fifteen strong images beat thirty mediocre ones. Never use wide-angle distortion to make a room look bigger than it is — the disappointment arrives at the viewing and costs you the buyer.

Floor plan and measurements

Measure every room and produce a floor plan with dimensions and total floor area. Buyers filter and compare on space, and a listing without a plan loses enquiries to one that has it. If you would rather not draw it yourself, a local photographer or a floor-plan service will produce one cheaply.

Writing the listing description

Open with the single strongest reason to buy: the garden, the catchment, the station, the parking, the extension potential. Then work through the layout, floor by floor, keeping it concrete — dimensions, materials, aspect, what you can see from the window.

Close with the practical facts buyers screen on: tenure, council tax band, EPC rating, heating type, parking, broadband availability, and for leasehold the lease length, ground rent and service charge.

Accuracy is a legal matter, not a style choice. Consumer protection rules cover misleading buyers by omission as well as by statement, so describe the property as it is.

Where to advertise

• A property platform that reaches active buyers. HausMart lists free during early access and matches your home to buyers whose brief and search area already fit.
• Local Facebook groups and community boards, which reach people who want that specific area but are not searching every day.
• Your own network. Word of mouth still finds a meaningful share of private-sale buyers.
• A For Sale board, which generates enquiries from people who already know and like the street.
• Local workplaces, schools and noticeboards where relocation is common.

Launch week

Publish everything at once — photos, plan, full description, EPC rating — and push it across every channel the same day. A new listing gets its largest audience in the first fortnight, and a half-finished launch wastes it.

Then watch the numbers. On HausMart you can see how many matched buyers saw the property, saved it or swiped past. Plenty of views but few saves usually means the price; few views means the reach or the lead photograph.