KONAHListing photos for a vacant home.
An empty house sounds easy to photograph: no clutter, no family photos, no pets. In practice, vacant homes bring their own problems. Every scuff shows, every room looks alike, half the bulbs are dead and nobody has mowed the lawn in three weeks. Here's how to prepare a vacant listing so the photos work, and how to decide between leaving rooms empty and staging them.
Why empty homes are harder than they look
Furniture does two jobs in a photo: it tells buyers what a room is for, and it shows how big the room is. Take it away and buyers lose both. An empty 12-by-12 bedroom and an empty 14-by-16 one can look almost identical in a wide-angle photo. Empty rooms also put every surface on display. Nail holes where pictures hung, outlines on the wall where a dresser stood, dents in the carpet from a bed frame and a dusty ceiling fan all show up, often more clearly than they do in person.
None of that is a reason to avoid photographing an empty house. It's a reason to prepare it more carefully than you might expect, and to think about which rooms buyers will need help picturing.
Utilities and lights
Before anything else, confirm that the power, water and heating or cooling are on and will stay on through the shoot. Photographers need electricity for lights, and a house with no heat in January or no air in August makes a poor first impression at showings anyway. Then deal with the lights:
- Walk every room and replace dead bulbs, including closets, the range hood, the garage and exterior fixtures.
- Match the color of the bulbs within each room. One cool white bulb next to two warm ones shows as an odd blue patch in a photo.
- Make sure ceiling fans and light switches are labeled or obvious, so the photographer isn't flipping every switch in the house.
- Leave the garage door opener, or tell us where it is, if the garage should be photographed open or the opener is how we get in.
If the seller has already taken the lamps, overhead lights matter even more. Leave every working fixture on when the photographer arrives, or note in the booking that they may switch them on.
Cleaning and small repairs
Vacant homes need a real clean before the shoot, not after. Dust settles fast on empty floors, window sills and fan blades, and it shows in photos. The jobs that make the biggest difference:
- Patch nail and anchor holes and touch up the paint, especially where furniture or art hid the wall.
- Vacuum carpets last, working toward the door, so the lines are even and there are no footprints.
- Clean windows inside, and outside where they're reachable; empty rooms are often shot toward the light.
- Clear every leftover item: paint cans, cleaning supplies, a forgotten box in a closet, the moving blanket in the garage.
- Wipe down kitchen counters, appliances and bathroom fixtures, and close toilet lids.
- Open or straighten every blind to the same height, or leave windows bare if the treatments have gone.
Small repairs are worth doing before the photos, because the photos will be on the listing for its whole life. A missing outlet cover or a cabinet door off its hinge is cheap to fix and expensive to leave in a picture.
The outside, when nobody lives there
A vacant home's yard goes downhill quickly. Arrange for the lawn to be mowed a day or two before the shoot, not the morning of, so the clippings have settled and the stripes look even. Rake leaves, pull weeds from the beds, and put down fresh mulch if the beds look tired. Take the trash cans out of sight and clear any flyers or packages from the porch. In winter, make sure the driveway and walks are cleared if it has snowed, and ask whether the seller wants the exteriors held for a better day.
If there's a pool, it should be clean and either open or neatly covered. A green pool or a sagging cover is worse than no pool photo at all. Our guide to seasonal listing photo tips covers how the time of year changes the outside plan.
Access and timing
Most vacant shoots happen with nobody home, so access details carry the whole visit. Put them in the booking: lockbox location and code, the alarm code and whether the system is armed, gate or garage codes, which door to use and any rooms that are locked. Tell us whether utilities are on, whether any rooms should be skipped and whether a stager, cleaner or contractor might be in the house at the same time.
Schedule the shoot after the last cleaning and any staging, and before the sign goes up if you want the front clear of it. If the seller is out of state, ask them to confirm everything is finished; photos of a half-painted room can't be used.
Which rooms to show, and how many
Vacant galleries are usually a little shorter than furnished ones, because empty rooms repeat each other. Lead with the spaces that sell the home: the front, the main living space, the kitchen, the primary suite, and any standout feature such as a finished basement, a sunroom or a view. Secondary bedrooms can share a photo each instead of two or three angles. Include detail shots of what buyers would otherwise miss in an empty room: hardwood floors, built-ins, new windows, a renovated bathroom vanity.
Angles matter more without furniture. A corner shot that includes two walls and a window gives a sense of size and light; a straight-on shot of a blank wall says nothing. Our how many photos guide has typical counts by home type.
Leave it empty, stage it or stage it virtually
There are three ways to handle the rooms themselves, and many listings mix them:
- Leave it empty when the rooms are clearly sized and laid out, like a townhome with an obvious living and dining area, or when the budget is tight and the home is priced to move.
- Stage it physically when showings matter as much as photos, or when rooms are awkward in person, not just in pictures.
- Stage it virtually ($40 per photo) for the two or three rooms buyers struggle to picture, like the main living space, the primary bedroom and a bonus room.
Virtual staging must be labeled, and it's good practice to include the empty version of each staged room in the gallery too, so buyers aren't surprised at the showing. Our guides to physical vs virtual staging and virtual staging disclosure go into each choice, and virtual staging shows how we do it.
Floor plans and 3D tours suit empty homes
Because buyers can't use furniture to judge size, a floor plan with measurements ($75) does a lot of work on a vacant listing. It answers the "will my sofa fit" question before anyone visits. Empty homes are also the easiest homes to scan for a 3D tour ($125): nothing to tidy between scans and nothing personal in the dollhouse view. If the seller has already moved away, a 3D tour also lets them see the finished marketing from wherever they are.
Vacant-home shoot-day checklist
- Power, water and heating or cooling on.
- Every bulb working and matching within each room.
- Holes patched, paint touched up, carpets vacuumed toward the door.
- Windows clean; blinds even or windows bare.
- Every leftover item removed, closets included.
- Lawn mowed a day or two before; beds weeded; trash cans out of sight.
- Pool clean, or neatly covered.
- Access details in the booking: lockbox, alarm, gate, doors, utilities.
- Staging finished, or the rooms for virtual staging chosen.
- Floor plan and 3D tour added if the layout needs explaining.
This is a general checklist from KONAH's shoots. Utility, insurance and lockbox arrangements for a vacant property are between the seller, the listing agent and the brokerage. Label any virtually staged photo as your MLS requires.