Spring is the busiest listing period of the year, which means a buyer scrolling on a Tuesday night is comparing your house against a great many others that went up the same week. They spend a few seconds on the first photograph and decide from it whether to keep reading.
That is the part most people under-prepare for. The house gets a proper clean on the Friday before the first open inspection, by which time the photographs have been live for a fortnight and have already done the work of deciding who turns up. The fix takes no extra work. It is the same clean, booked against a different date, and it pairs with the pre-sale clean we do for Adelaide homes going to market.
Book the clean for the day before the shoot. Anything that needs to dry, carpets especially, goes two or three days earlier so nothing is damp or dark in the frame.
The Photos Are the Deadline
A campaign has two audiences and they see the house at different times. The online audience is everybody, and they see a set of photographs taken on one morning weeks ago. The inspection audience is the handful of people the photographs convinced. Cleaning for the second group and not the first is doing the work in the wrong order.
So fix the photography date first and hang everything off it. The deep clean goes the day before. Carpet or upholstery cleaning goes two or three days before that, because damp carpet photographs darker than dry carpet and a wet patch reads as a stain. Anything involving a tradesperson goes earlier again, since that is the part that slips.
Day before the shoot
The deep clean, so the house is at its best on the one morning that gets recorded.
Three days before
Carpets and upholstery, so everything is properly dry by the time the camera is out.
A week or more
Anything needing a tradesperson, because that is always the booking that moves.
One thing worth knowing about the calendar this year: South Australian school holidays run from 26 September to 11 October, and daylight saving starts on Sunday 4 October. If you want the longer evening light in the photographs, or twilight shots of the back of the house, the booking has to be made before everybody else has the same thought.
What a Wide Lens Picks Up
Real estate photography is shot wide, from a low tripod, and usually into the light so the windows are not blown out. All three of those things change what shows. A room you cleaned to eye level comes out with a haze across the glass, the floor stretching away to the far skirting board, and the underside of the coffee table in shot.
Glass, and everything reflective
Windows, mirrors, splashbacks, the shower screen, the oven door. Shooting into light turns an invisible smear into a visible haze.
Floors, corner to corner
A low wide shot shows the whole floor at once, including the edges and the strip under the kitchen kick boards.
Anything on a surface
Fridge magnets, shower bottles, the knife block, the dish rack. A wide lens reads them all as clutter and the bench as smaller.
Light fittings and ceilings
Shot from low, the ceiling is in frame far more than you expect, along with whatever has collected in the light shades.
Take a photo on your phone first. Stand in the doorway, hold it low, and look at the result rather than the room. The camera picks up the things your eye has stopped registering, which is the entire problem with cleaning a house you live in.
The Rooms That Carry It
Buyers walk through most of a house and stop in two or three rooms. The kitchen and the bathrooms are where they slow down, open things and look closely, and they are the rooms people use to judge how the whole property has been kept. Weight the effort accordingly rather than spreading it evenly.
Inside the oven
People genuinely open it. A clean oven behind a clean door is one of the few things that reads as care rather than staging.
The rangehood filter
Comes out, soaks in hot water with detergent, goes back. It is greasy, visible from below and nobody expects it to be done.
Grout, silicone and screens
The shower gets looked at closely. Discoloured grout and a filmed screen are what people remember from a bathroom.
Around the tap bases
Limescale collects where the tap meets the basin, on kitchen mixers and in the laundry trough, and it photographs.
Cupboards are worth a thought too. People open the one under the kitchen sink and the linen press, and a cupboard crammed to the door tells a buyer the house has no storage. Thin them out and the same cupboard says the opposite. What comes out goes into the garage or a storage unit, not into another cupboard.
A clean house is not a repaired house. Cleaning will not hide a water stain on a ceiling or a cracked tile, and trying to is a poor use of the day. Fix what is worth fixing, and let the clean do the job it is actually good at.
The Smell You Cannot Smell
Your nose stops reporting a constant smell within minutes of exposure, which is why nobody can smell their own house. A buyer walks in from outside with a fresh nose and forms an impression before they have reached the hallway. It is the single thing sellers are least able to check for themselves.
The workaround is to ask someone who does not live there, and to tell them you want the honest answer. Failing that, work through the usual culprits, which are almost always soft, damp or organic: pet bedding, the couch, the bin under the sink, the fridge and dishwasher seals, the washing machine door gasket, and a towel rail that never quite dries.
Wash what holds it
Pet bedding, throws, cushion covers and curtains carry more odour than any hard surface in the house
Seals and gaskets
Fridge, dishwasher and washing machine door seals, which grow a black line nobody looks at
Bins and the cupboard around them
Including the base of the cupboard the bin sits in, which is usually the actual source
Air it, do not mask it
Open the house up the morning of an inspection. A strong air freshener reads as covering something up
Skip the baking bread and the fresh coffee. Everybody knows what it is for, and a house that smells of nothing in particular is doing better than a house that smells of a strategy.
The Twenty Minute Reset
A campaign runs for weeks and the house has to present again every Saturday, usually while you are still living in it. Trying to repeat the deep clean each time is how people end up hating the process by week three. What actually works is a short fixed routine, done in the same order, so you are not deciding anything at nine on a Saturday morning.
Bins out of sight
Emptied, and the wheelie bins moved off the drive and away from the front of the house
Benches and vanities clear
Everything into one box that lives in the boot of the car during inspections
Blinds to the same height
Uneven blinds are the detail that makes an otherwise tidy room look unkempt
Lights on, lids down
Lamps on in the darker rooms even in daylight, and every toilet lid closed
A quick vacuum of the traffic route, a wipe of the kitchen bench and the bathroom mirror, and the floor by the back door where everybody comes in. Twenty minutes, same order, every time.
Book Your Pre-Sale Clean
Selling is already a month of packing, paperwork and keeping the house tidy for strangers. The deep clean before the photographs is the part worth handing over, because it happens on a fixed date you cannot move and it takes a full day done properly. Our Adelaide team covers the city and inner east, the Hills, the western beaches and the northern suburbs, with the same trusted, fully insured and police-checked cleaner each visit.
Glass & Frames
Windows, sills, mirrors and screens, the surfaces a wide lens shows up first
Kitchen & Bathrooms
Inside the oven, the rangehood filter, grout, screens and tap bases
Floors & High Dust
Edges, skirtings, cornices and light fittings, corner to corner rather than eye level
If the property is already empty we can work to a vacate standard instead. Tell us the photography date and we will work back from it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q.When should I clean before real estate photos are taken?
The day before the shoot. A clean done a week out gives the house time to accumulate a normal week of living, and the photographs are the part of the campaign that stays fixed: they go online before any buyer sets foot in the place and they represent the property for its whole run. Work backwards from the photography booking rather than forwards from the day you list, and put the deep clean immediately before it. Anything that needs drying time, such as carpets or steam-cleaned upholstery, goes two or three days earlier so nothing is damp in the frame.
Q.What do buyers actually notice at an open inspection?
Smell first, then the kitchen and bathrooms, then whatever they open. People do open the oven, the shower screen gets looked at closely, and cupboards under sinks get a glance. Grout and silicone in a shower, limescale around tap bases, the rangehood filter and the inside of the toilet hinges all read as how the house has been kept rather than as small jobs left undone. The rooms people simply walk through matter far less than the two or three rooms where they stop and look.
Q.Why does spring matter for selling a house in Adelaide?
Spring is the traditional peak listing period, so more homes go to market at once and yours is being compared against more of them in the same week. The practical detail this year is the calendar: South Australian school holidays run from 26 September to 11 October, and daylight saving starts on Sunday 4 October, which puts usable evening light back into weekday inspections. If you want photos taken in that longer light, the booking needs to be made well before the first weekend everybody else has the same idea.
Q.Does MyHomeCleaning do pre-sale cleaning in Adelaide?
Yes. A pre-sale clean is a once-off deep clean timed around your photography booking and your first open inspection, covering the glass and frames, the kitchen including inside the oven and the rangehood filter, bathrooms down to the grout and tap bases, floors, skirtings and the high dust a wide lens picks up. If the property is empty we can work to a vacate standard instead. Our Adelaide team covers the city and inner east, the Hills, the western beaches and the northern suburbs, with the same trusted, fully insured and police-checked cleaner each visit. Tell us about your home and we'll put together a personalised quote.
