Right move listing am I being ridiculous?

[holigogo]

Settle a discussion between me and my husband.
I said that if a right move listing doesn’t have a picture of the front of the house as the main picture I usually scroll past. e.g if the first pic is of the garden, inside of the house, or drone shot.
He said I’m being ridiculous. He’s probably right but got me thinking as we’re going to sell our house soon what stops you clicking on a listing and what is the ideal first picture?

I’d not discount a listing just for this. When I bought my house the exterior wasn’t the leading photo (and perhaps that’s the reason I got it for such an absolute steal, if lots of other potential buyers were automatically writing it off!) It’s a plain, post-war bomb infill house in a street of otherwise pretty Victorian terraces, so I can imagine there was some element of bait and switch thought by the seller to get people looking at the interior first assuming it was one of the pretty houses; but I don’t spend a lot of time looking at my house from the outside, so it wasn’t a key driver for me.

With you on this

If it was the right price range in the right location I usually flick through the pictures but inevitably if it's not the first picture it's always ugly so sometimes I just scroll by. How a house looks is important to me.

Until we sold our last house, I'd have agreed with you @holigogo. However, now I'd say you're being ridiculous and your husband is right!

Our last house sounded wonderful on paper - a 400 year old detached mill set in half an acre of partially walled garden in semi-rural Wales. We had fully renovated it with HMKOC kitchen and high end fittings throughout. The garden had been brought back from a weed-infested wilderness to a pretty cottage garden. There was nothing comparable on the market.

However, as it was a mill with undercroft area and set raised above street level behind lovely high walls, it was really difficult to get a good photo of the front. The professional photographer employed by our EA struggled, as did we. Therefore we agreed to use a garden photo as the first picture on the listing. After a few weeks we changed this to one of the kitchen which was a stunning room (imho 😉). The front elevation photo was the second or third one on the RM/Zoopla listing, iirc.

Located where it was, we were never going to be inundated with viewings, but we sold to the fourth people to view. Did the lack of front photo make a difference? I honestly don't know, but we certainly weren't hiding anything by not showing the front 😁

Personally, I like a drone shot as the first photo - the EA we used to sell our previous house (in England) offered this option, our Welsh EA didn't.

The only thing that might make me scroll past a property listing is no floorplan, but tbh sometimes those can be the most intriguing imho!

I’d look at all houses in my range and preferred area. Otherwise I might potentially miss one that ticks all the boxes. However I would expect to see a photo of the front somewhere in the listing.

I would assume it's not a pretty house, but my house doesn't have kerb appeal, so it's not an issue for me. I could have bought a place with more character, but only 2 bedrooms would have been affordable. I have 3 bedrooms and more space for my lack of character.

Nope I look at bedroom, price and area... if it says its got 4 bedrooms, or is 3 bed and a great price or 3 bed and affordable in a decent area I give it a click regardless because I am actively looking for a place to live not playing 'dream house'.

Can't say I have ever thought the photos need to be in any specific order and honestly the worst houses I ever viewed had photos of outside but few of inside (THATS normally hiding something). Many houses list with a photo of the living room as their main photo, its pretty standard not because theres anything wrong with the outside but because the living room is the bit you will spend your life living in mostly so its usually the nicest room.

I do HATE when they lack a floor plan though or worse they have one but its clearly wrong/doesn't make sense.

Also sometimes I click on a house purely because it looks like an utter disaster and I'm nosy too so I think bad houses get a lot of rightmove clicks.

I click on them all , one , because I'm nosey and two, because it might be what I'm looking for.

To illustrate my point, I've just been through all the photos of our old house on my phone and could only find two of the front elevation (taken before we'd finished the renovations), one of which I've attached.

As you can see it doesn't show the front door (important imho). Also we had an oak framed side extension to the left which again was impossible to capture in a photo of the front, so you couldn't see the full extent of the property....

Sometimes they use a photo of a stunning kitchen or view instead, if they think that will grab people more. There usually aren't enough of the kind of house I'm looking for to be able to skip a listing because I don't like the order of the photos.

I do find it odd to not have the first picture of the front of the house, however I always feel compelled to scroll and find it! I then do Street View to cement my opinion!

Yes, I assume it at least needs a new door and windows, or has waist-high weeds.

Most houses are pretty uninteresting at the front but its an easy fix to add a porch, change cladding etc to make it more attractive if that’s important to you.

For me the floorplan is the most important part, as everything else - decor, room allocation etc can be changed. Floorplans of course can also be changed with a bit of work, but the old adage about location is also true - whatever the house looks like is irrelevant if its in a bad location. I’d rather have a fugly house with a good layout in a nice spot than a beautiful frontage with a downstairs bathroom, in an area with noise, traffic, school at the end of the road etc.

I'll still click on it but but if there's no floor plan then I'd have to be very interested to enquire further.

If it says Leasehold but instead of the cost it says 'ask agent' then it's a definite NO.

I think that sometimes they don’t put the front of the house or flat as a 1st pic if there are many similar looking properties for sale on an estate or if there is a fabulous garden. It’s a way to make a house stand out more.

I wouldn’t discount it entirely and would click to see because often a picture of the house front is there. If it’s the right house it’s the right house! But it does make me question why! If there was no picture of the front of the house at all it’s a definite no.

If you would discount a house that was in every other regard perfect but had an unattractive frontage then maybe you'd have a point, although even then you could miss out.

I work at an estate agents in London & some houses are just difficult to get good shots of due to parked cars, trees in full leaf/hedges obscuring the frontage etc. So we tend to lead with the photo of the property's most attractive feature.

Incidentally we have just sold an attractive brick fronted property £1m+ leading with the front reception so I don't think it's generally a problem for our applicants. 😀

I agree. Even if a kitchen is amazing if the house isn't attractive from the outside I won't be buying it. If the house looks nice I don't care too much about kitchens, etc which can be changed.

I wouldn’t scroll past as I would want to see if there was a problem. I don’t like aerial shots, can’t figure out what I’m looking at but useful to see if the house is alongside a busy road.

But I'd still see that photo and think that's the sort of house I could see myself living in rather than a bland new house on a housing estate like a Lego house. Just from the glimpse of the front I would think it has character.

I'd take a rear of the house shot as the first photo over an interior shot.

I ignore the house and skip straight to the garden pics.

I looked at the location, price, the number of rooms, the layout and sizes of the rooms, the garden, parking and how much work needed doing.

I think EAs try and highlight the best bits of a house - eg the stunning kitchen or beautiful Edwardian hallway rather than showing another bog standard front of a terrace. It wouldn’t occur to me to avoid a house because the front isn’t ‘pretty’.

I also always scroll past for the same reasons. However, an agent local to us always lists properties with an internal shot first, according to them it’s research based and draws people’s interest. I don’t get it.

Yup, after crunching their stats RM advises to lead with the best pic (which is only sometimes the front) & to swap photos around every couple of weeks to boost views.

I’m willing to look past an ugly house. I just want to see the context of the property from the beginning. That starts with a proper first picture of the home. Otherwise I feel like they are hiding something about the location more than just aesthetics.