Most of our buyers come up from New York City, and the first year brings the same surprises every time.
Book the chimney sweep and the furnace service in September, before everyone else does. Find out whether your road is plowed by the town or by you. Learn where the water shut-off is before you need it.
And meet your neighbours early. Out here they are also your snow plough, your plumber’s phone number and your house sitter.
Every listing gets a full day with a photographer. We shoot in the morning for east-facing rooms and late afternoon for the rest.
We take every photo at full resolution, straight off a full-frame camera, and upload them that way so buyers can zoom into the details.
A typical listing ends up with 30 to 40 photos and a short walkthrough video.
Autumn is when the valley looks its best, and listing photos taken in October tend to do well into the winter.
Homes near the train stations in Beacon, Cold Spring and Rhinecliff still move fastest. Farther from the line, buyers are taking more time and asking more questions about heating and broadband.
If you are thinking about selling in the spring, the work to do now is the work that needs dry weather: roofs, gutters, exterior paint.
Buyers decide in the first ten seconds of the photos, and the first ten minutes of the visit. The cheapest fixes are the ones that change those moments.
Start outside. Paint the front door, cut back anything that hides the windows, and replace the house numbers if they are faded. Inside, take out a third of the furniture in every room. Rooms photograph larger with less in them.
Then the small repairs: dripping taps, sticking doors, a cracked tile. None of them cost much, and every one of them is a line on a buyer’s list of reasons to offer less.