How to film a video tour that sells your house

A good video tour is the closest a buyer gets to a viewing without leaving the sofa — listings with video get watched, shared and remembered while photo-only listings get scrolled past. The good news: you don't need a camera crew. You need a tidy house, two honest lists, and a phone held at chest height.

First, an honest word with yourself

Before anything else: you are about to stage your home for strangers. Tidy every room and put away the personal and private things — letters, photos, anything with your name on it. The house stops being your home for a moment; the whole point is that someone else can imagine it as theirs.

If that thought is hard to sit with, take it seriously. Selling your largest asset yourself is a professional activity, and finding the staging unbearable is often the earliest sign that separating emotion from business will be a struggle. Give yourself time to decide — there is no shame in concluding that now isn't the moment.

Make two lists: features and faults

Walk the house like a buyer. First list: the key features — the fireplace, the view, the garden, the light in the kitchen at four o'clock. Second, harder list: the faults. Be honest with yourself here and be honest in the listing — hiding a known problem or misrepresenting a fact isn't sharp selling, it's a serious legal issue. Don't do it.

Then add the thing no agent can match: your local knowledge. You know the area better than anyone you could hire — the bus route that actually runs on time, which neighbours extended their kitchen and what it did for the space, where the light lands in spring. Agents are skilled at presenting a home as somewhere wonderful to live; you have the advantage of knowing it is.

Write it down — then remove every adjective

Turn the lists into text. Be as detailed as you like, but don't write like an estate agent: write clearly, reread, and strike every adjective. "Stunning", "charming" and "deceptively spacious" tell a buyer nothing. Facts do:

"Quiet street, but close to the shops, and there's a bus stop across the road — the B389 runs to the centre in under 15 minutes on a good day. The front garden has an apple tree that blooms in spring. The kitchen looks out over the valley. That said, it's small and could do with modernising — a neighbour recently extended theirs into the back garden and roughly doubled the size."

Notice what that paragraph does: transport, a feature, a fault, and an idea for fixing it, all in plain sentences a buyer trusts. Cover transport, parking, the house's features, its faults, and everything your local knowledge adds.

Photograph the details

If the house has period features or a view, they earn their own photos — from several angles. Stone fireplaces, sash windows, original floorboards, plasterwork, the outlook from the kitchen window: anything that stands out gets shot on its own.

The walkthrough

If you've done the prep, filming is the easy part:

• Start at the front door or the top of the house — pick one and commit.
• Open every door and every curtain before you press record.
• Hold the phone at your chest, facing straight out, and let your body do the moving — same height, same angle, the whole way.
• Walk slowly and consistently through the halls and into each room, panning gently side to side so every room is properly seen.
• At a focal point — the fireplace, the view — walk right up to it at the same pace, pan slowly left to right, then move on.
• Big house? Film one floor at a time and take breaks.

No people in the shot (pets are fine), and don't talk over it. Let the house do the talking.

Shaky footage happens — we fix it free

Real walkthroughs wobble. We built a free tool that takes a hand-held phone video, smooths the shake, and fast-forwards the corridor stretches so the rooms get the screen time: try the video polisher and compare the result side by side. If you list on gaffon, the same polish is offered on your listing automatically — and your original video is never overwritten.

The professional alternative

A professional photographer or videographer is well worth the money if the budget allows — one morning and the marketing is done. Everything above still applies: the staging, the lists and the honest text are yours either way, because nobody else has your local knowledge.

Then let the house sell itself

Upload the video, the photos and your adjective-free text, drop the pin on the exact location, and the listing is live: start with the seller's guide. Not sure about the asking price? See what your home is worth — an estimate built from the sold prices around you, with the evidence shown.