I am by no means a professional photographer. What I am is a real estate professional. One thing I have learned is that pictures can make or break a listing, help you remember haggling points, and keep your properties straight. There are  going to be times when you’re looking at multiple properties.  So here is what I recommend:

Take photographs of both ways up and down the street: To give yourself an idea of the neighborhood.

Take some decent shots of the front of the house and garage if applicable:

Then you want to get ugly. The nasty things you’re going to remember when haggling with the seller.

Termites-mold-serial killer bathroom

I also recommend taking photographs of any of the positives you can find with the property. New drywall/Furnace

Also try to take pictures that will help you remember the layout of the home. I didn’t have very good ones for the front but you can see where the kitchen, addition, and bathroom are quite clearly.

You want to make sure you take photographs you can use as either before/afters, to wholesale it, or just keep your properties straight. Drop Box is a great tool for storing/sharing pictures. If someone reaches out to you about one of your properties you can just email them a dropbox link. You can even choose how many hours the link is good for! In general you want to get good pictures that capture an entire room. Then get some highlights. For my total room pictures I like to stand in the doorway and hold my camera above my head to kind of get a corner to corner shot.

So I know this one may have seemed overly simplistic but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve left a property and realized I didn’t have a good shot of the front of the home, or I didn’t remember what the street was like. As an investor your time is precious. You want to get in, get out, and not have to drive back because you forgot something silly.

Yes, this was an actual house we walked through. Your goal should be to become a transactional engineer. If you can turn a home like this into a profit you’ve got a long successful career ahead of you.