Why Every Property Listing Needs a Floorplan

Imagine finding a property online that looks perfect.

The photographs are excellent. The location is right. The price is within budget. You start seriously considering whether this could be your next home.

There's just one problem.

Where's the floorplan?

For something that is relatively straightforward to produce, a floorplan can play an incredibly useful role in property marketing. Photographs show buyers what individual rooms look like, but a floorplan helps them understand how those rooms actually fit together.

That's why I believe every property you bring to the market should have one.

It doesn't matter whether you're selling a small one-bedroom flat or an enormous detached family home. Buyers want to understand the layout before they arrange a viewing, and a good property floorplan makes that considerably easier.

Think about what photographs can't always tell you.

Is the kitchen connected to the dining room? Does the utility room lead outside? Where is the downstairs toilet? Do you have to walk through one bedroom to reach another? How does the extension connect with the original property?

You could attempt to explain all of this in the written description, but a buyer can often understand it in seconds by looking at the floorplan.

A floorplan also allows potential buyers to start mentally moving into the property.

They can look at the dimensions of a room and think about whether their furniture will fit. They can understand where the bedrooms sit in relation to each other. They can begin imagining how they might use different areas of the house before they've even walked through the front door.

For an estate agent, however, there's another reason floorplans matter.

You're not only marketing the property to buyers.

You're marketing your estate agency to future sellers.

Every property listing you publish is effectively a public example of the service you provide. Homeowners thinking about selling their own property can look at your listings and compare them with those produced by your competitors.

If one agent consistently provides excellent photography, detailed floorplans and polished marketing while another doesn't, which one appears to be putting more effort into selling their clients' homes?

This is why I wouldn't view a floorplan as an optional extra reserved for expensive properties.

It should simply be part of the standard.

And if you're already producing a floorplan, there are ways you can make it even more useful.

Most people are familiar with a traditional two-dimensional floorplan. It does the job perfectly well, but you can potentially take the presentation further with a 3D floorplan.

A 3D plan can make the layout easier for some buyers to visualise because it gives the property more depth and makes the relationship between different rooms immediately obvious.

Depending on the software or supplier you're using, creating this additional version may require relatively little extra work.

Then there's the plot plan.

A normal floorplan tells buyers what's happening inside the property. A plot plan can help them understand what is happening outside it.

This can be particularly useful for houses where the relationship between the building, driveway and garden is an important part of the property.

A buyer might be able to see that the house sits towards the front of the plot, for example, with most of the garden behind it. They may be able to understand the shape of the outside space or see how the property is positioned in relation to the rest of the site.

Again, you're giving buyers useful information before they even arrive.

There is, however, a point where combining the plot plan and floorplan stops being particularly helpful.

Imagine you're marketing a relatively modest bungalow sitting in ten acres of land.

If you attempt to show the entire site and the internal floorplan at the same scale, you'll end up with a huge area of land and a tiny building somewhere in the middle. Buyers will need to zoom in several times before they can even work out where the kitchen is.

In situations like this, separate the two.

Keep the floorplan focused on the property itself and create an additional land or site plan showing the wider boundaries.

The objective isn't to cram as much information as possible into one graphic. It's to make that information easy to understand.

How you actually produce your property floorplans will depend on how your estate agency operates.

Many professional property photography companies can provide floorplans alongside their photography packages. Alternatively, estate agents can produce plans themselves using suitable measuring equipment and floorplan software.

With practice, measuring a fairly straightforward property doesn't need to become an enormous job. Once you have a repeatable process, many homes can be measured relatively quickly.

But whether you create the floorplan yourself or outsource it, there's one final step that should never be ignored.

Check it.

Don't assume that because somebody else produced the plan, it must be correct.

Look at every room. Check the doors. Check the windows. Make sure the important features are represented and that the layout actually resembles the property you've just visited.

A beautiful floorplan isn't particularly useful if the back door has disappeared or somebody has accidentally moved the bathroom to the other side of the house.

This comes back to a wider principle in estate agency marketing.

Every piece of content attached to a property should have a purpose.

Photography generates attention and helps buyers experience the home visually. The description provides context and highlights important features. The floorplan gives buyers an understanding of space, dimensions and layout. A plot plan can then provide additional context about the property as a whole.

Together, these elements make it easier for buyers to decide whether a property deserves their attention.

And that's ultimately what great property marketing should do.

A floorplan might look like a relatively small part of a property listing, but it's another opportunity to make the buying experience easier and demonstrate the standard of marketing your estate agency provides.

So before your next property goes live, take one final look at the listing.

If you're asking buyers to imagine living there, make sure you've actually shown them how the home fits together.

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