Photography

Photographs are the entire first round of your sale. A buyer scrolling results decides in a second or two whether to click, and manufactured homes photograph poorly by default, narrow rooms, low ceilings, and small windows all work against you. Deliberate photography is the highest-return effort available to you.

Shoot in daylight, with every light on and every blind open. Turn lights on even in daylight; it lifts the shadows in rooms that only have windows at one end. Shoot from a corner of each room at roughly chest height, which makes narrow rooms read as wider, and hold the camera level so vertical lines stay vertical.

Cover the whole home in a logical order, exterior front, living area, kitchen, each bedroom, each bathroom, any bonus space, then exterior rear and outbuildings. Buyers distrust listings with gaps, and a missing bathroom reads as a bad bathroom. If your home has an unusual layout, an accurate floor sketch helps more than another photograph.

Photograph what buyers of manufactured homes specifically worry about: the roof, the skirting, the steps and landing, and the crawl-space access if it is clean. Showing that the things people fear are in good order is more persuasive than another picture of the living room.

Do not distort. Extreme wide-angle lenses and digital retouching produce viewings that end in disappointment and lost trust. Photographs should flatter the home and represent it accurately.