The Curb Appeal Checklist to Run Before Listing Photos

The exterior shot leads the listing. It is the thumbnail, it is the postcard, and it is what a buyer decides on before they have read a word about the house. It is also the cheapest thing on the whole prep list to fix, and most of it can be done in a single day.

Here is the order we work in when an agent hands us a house, and roughly what each piece costs you in time.

1. Cut the grass, then edge it

Mowing is the part everybody remembers. Edging is the part that makes a photo look professional. A clean line where the lawn meets the walk and the driveway reads as a cared-for house even in a small photo, and a shaggy overhang reads as neglect. Trim around the steps, the mailbox post, the lamp post, and the foundation while you are at it, because those are exactly the spots a wide-angle lens picks up.

Time: an hour or two on a city lot. Timing: do it a day or two before the shoot, not a week.

2. Wash the front windows, inside and out

Interior photos are shot toward the windows more often than not. Dirty glass shows up as haze in every one of those frames, and screens show up as a gray film over what is supposed to be the view. Many photographers will ask for screens to come off the front windows entirely. Clean glass also lets the room read brighter, which is the single thing listing photos are trying hardest to do.

Time: half a day for a whole house, less for the front only.

3. Power wash the walk, the steps, and the driveway

In Minnesota this is the biggest visual change available for the money. A winter of salt and sand leaves concrete chalky and gray, and a shaded walk grows a green film that you stop noticing when you see it every day. A camera does not stop noticing it. Washed concrete photographs as a bright line leading the eye to the front door, which is what you want the photo to do.

Time: a few hours. Watch out for: it needs to dry before the shoot, so do not schedule it for the same morning.

4. Deal with the driveway itself

If the asphalt has gone gray and cracked, a wash only gets you so far. Sealing it puts the black back, and a black driveway against a green lawn is a striking amount of contrast in a photo. Two things to know: it needs warm, dry weather, and cars have to stay off it for a day or two. That makes it the one item on this list you cannot do at the last minute.

If the driveway is genuinely breaking apart, sealing it is not the answer and a buyer will spot it anyway. Price the house accordingly and move on.

5. Clear the entry

Cobwebs in the porch corners, a dusty light fixture, leaves in the corner of the step, a dead plant in a pot by the door. None of it is expensive to fix and all of it is visible at the resolution buyers actually look at. The front door area gets its own photo in most listings, so it is worth ten minutes more than it seems.

6. Look at the gutters from the street

Gutter faces streak, and the streaks run vertically down a horizontal line, which the eye catches immediately. Washing the faces is quick. If there are saplings growing out of them, a buyer's inspector will find that later anyway, so it is better to clear them now.

7. Then take the photo in the right light

Most Twin Cities houses face a direction that gets good front light either in the morning or in the late afternoon, rarely both. Ask your photographer which one your listing wants, and schedule the exterior work to finish the day before that window, not the morning of. Weather moves. Give yourself somewhere to move with it.

What to skip

Do not repaint the front door the week of the shoot unless it is genuinely bad, do not put in new plants that will be wilted by the open house, and do not power wash siding that is chalking, because it can come out worse than it went in. The list above is the high-return part. Everything past it starts costing real money for a smaller change in the photo.

Or hand it to one crew

This is exactly what our curb appeal package is: items one through six, in that order, in one visit, for one price. Agents can see how we handle listings, including who gets the invoice, on our page for real estate agents. In winter, when the list is shorter and the walk has to be walkable, it is snow removal instead.