Your questions answered

Photos now for selling later

My patio garden is, I believe, a big selling point for my house. It mostly has large feature containers with raised beds. I have designed it with colour in mind and the walls are painted to pick up the colours of the flowers. It looks fantastic at the moment. The problem is that I intend selling my house early next year but I know that the photos of the garden in winter for the brochure will look dreadful. Would it be okay to take photos now and who should take them? I can take photos but do agents prefer to take them?

You should take a leaf out of selling campaigns for very large, top-of-the-market houses with great gardens. If an agent gets advance notice that the house will be coming on the market in winter, he or she will usually advise that photos are taken of the garden when it is in full bloom. So get a good digital camera and snap away. You will then be able to give the disc over to your agent for inclusion into the brochure or onto the website. While gardens are hugely important in the majority of house sales, only one photo usually makes it into the brochure. This is for space reasons but also because, no matter how fabulous your garden is, buyers are going to be more interested in the actual house. The typical brochure usually features an exterior shot of the front of the house - without the car in the driveway or a passing van obscuring a part of it - one or two interior shots, usually of a livingroom and the kitchen and the garden.

As to who takes the photographs - that very much depends. At the top end of the market - where glossy brochures with several pages are the norm - agents usually commission a professional photographer. The seller ultimately pays for this service. The arrival of digital cameras, which are easy to use and produce high-quality pictures, has encouraged agents to take their own photos for more modest brochures. When choosing an agent, look at the brochures they produce - all agents have a standard format particular to themselves - because that's what you'll be getting. You should be careful how you present your patio - as it's a container garden you need to be very sure what is included in the sale. If it is listed in the brochure as "a colourful container garden" it would be reasonable for buyers to expect that the containers will be part of the sale. That's fine if that's what you want but you must be very clear about this - arguments about who owns what when it comes to garden sheds, planters and other outdoor features are not unusual.

House prices in the paper

How does the price that houses sell for get in the newspaper? I do not want the price I get for my house made public as I believe that it is a private matter between me and the buyer.

Is your house for sale by auction or private treaty? A public auction is just that - public - and anyone is free to attend and the price that the house sells for under the hammer is public knowledge. Private treaty sales are private - but the price guide gives public notice of the sort of money the seller is looking for. In the sales results section of this paper, prices for some private treaty sales are included and these are provided by the agent, who normally releases the price only if the vendor has agreed.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to respond to all questions. The above is a representative sample of queries received. This column is a readers' service and is not intended to replace professional advice. No individual correspondence will be entered into.