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Real Estate Photography - a new twist?
AZsnapper
Registered Users Posts: 99 Big grins
I know the subject of doing real estate photography has been discussed, and the general consencous is that it isn't very profitable because realtors mainly take thier own photos.
Wondering if anybody has tried to turn the business model around and market thier services directly to homeowners?
Wondering if anybody has tried to turn the business model around and market thier services directly to homeowners?
Visit my web site
www.shadowlakes.com
www.shadowlakes.com
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... that high level (= high profit:-) phoitography can now only be applied to the high end market. P&S digicams do just fine for the entry-level and most moderately priced dwellings even in the hands of a person who has no idea of what f/stop is. Green mode can work miracles:-)
High end, OTOH, requires more views and more quality..
Also, it does not sound outrageous to pay a hundred (or several) for the "ad campaing artwork" if the price of the property has at least 7 digits...
Just MHO...
Well, I know the high end already uses pro photographers. I was thinking mid market.
Yes, every real estate has a camera. Some even DSLR. But have you been on Realtor.com? 98% of the photos are junk. Snapping a pic, download off the camera, and uploading to the MLS doesn't yield the best results.
If the price was affordable, the pitch could work, IMO. After all, NAR reports that something like over 95% of prospective homebuyers start thier search on the internet. In the days of yore, when people cruised around in thier cars looking at houses, curb appeal was king to get people to stop. Yet when people 'drive around' online - it seems curb appeal is thrown out the window.
Just my idea, anyways. Just wondering if anybody out there is doing this already in thier market, and if it's successful.
www.shadowlakes.com
service I expect would include the agent's ability to market the house.
Including the photography of the place.
Yeah, your right. Maybe it's a regional thing, but here in my part of AZ, Realtors don't do jack. Post a few crappy pics on MLS, make up a couple flyers, and wait. Too used to the years of sizzlling sales, I guess
www.shadowlakes.com
In the slim chance there's an office that doesn't already have a photographer, sadly, I don't think they'd pay enough to make it worthwhile.
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky
Interesting topic.
I'm a pro photgrapher in Atlanta where the real estae market is big.
One of my first job was (and still is) about real estate.
When I was starting my business I partnered with some real estate agents to take pictures of their listings.
I charge $150 to do one house that usually sell in the $500-600K.
Given the commission the agent gets on a deal like that they can afford to pay that price and for them it became a way to get new listings more easily because they can provide something (professional quality pictures) that the other don't.
When you want to sell your house, there are so many agents out there that you end up picking one on very tiny criterias like this one.
Providing this additional service has proven successful for the people I work with (they also do nice flyers).
In my opinion Real Estate professionals are among the people who get an insane amount of money providing a very low quality job. Can you name another job where you can take crappy pictures, produce a very basic flyer, stick that in a box in front of a house or upload it on the internet and just wait to make $15K while answering a few phone calls.
Each time an agent tells me that he sold a house I correct him with something like - you mean somebody bought the house you listed.
The trend recently, with the prices going down has been to get the agents to reduce their commission, I really hope the homeowner will start to realize that they also have to ask the agents to be more professional in the service they deliver. And that means no more crappy pictures !
Then maybe pro photographers will make a living with RE.
L
www.mindworkscreation.com
Photography and design studio
Photography and Design Studio
Pictures galleries at photo.mindworkscreation.com
Very interesting insight, thank you very much for sharing!
Good insight. Like I said, RE agents around these parts seem to be realy stingy and cheap. Alot of people we know have complained about this. But I really like your idea of the approach that having 'professional' photos will give them an edge.
How do you do your photography - do you try to mainly shoot early morning and late afternoon - or do you take what time you have to take? Do you use flash for interior shots, or try to use natural light as much as possible? I know some of the higher end photographer use elaborate lighting techniques, but I think I could make decent shots using natural lighting, maybe sometimes having to blend some exposures in PP. I am using my house as practice, of course.
Thanks for the input again!
www.shadowlakes.com
Here is a link to another forum where there was a discussion about this: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1005&message=15064631
In my neck of the woods, most MLS listings now have a video tour. That is what buyers now expect.
Nice linkie, post #2 is awesome!
If you have CS2 GoLive! is a simple way to build out a site like this in an hour or two. Using GoDaddy (we've been really pleased with them) to register a domain and for hosting is super cheap and could be handled by you or the home owner very easily.
Yes, the dreaded video tour! Most of them are absolutley horrible. The distortion is so bad you can't hardly make out what you're looking at.
But, like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Just not a picture taken by the agent with his cell phone cam!
www.shadowlakes.com
Interesting "spin", very cool business idea and neat execution!
I totally agree with what has been told about the agents being greedy and cheap. Most of them make an indecent amount of money and are still outraged when you ask them to pay for a good quality service.
Those should simply be avoided by the homeowners but unfortunatley most of them want to seel their house quickly and hope that the agent they pick will ahve the solution to that problem and has a long list of buyers just waiting to buy their house.
It simply never happens that way.
Ok enough bad words about Real estates agents (i do have very good friends who are agents, they just behave a little differently) and let's go back to photography.
The way I do my work :
- I try to take all the pictures in one day.
- With natural light if the weather cooperate or with a flash when I have no other solution.
- I usually ask for the orientation of the house before going so I can go at a time when I know the the front of the hosue will face the sun.
- Unless the house is really on the high end of the market (over a million), using complex lighting technique is not worth it.
You can check my web site for some examples.
Concerning the video, i simply don't believe in that, for different reasons :
- the internet is not ready for broadcast of high resolution video in descent conditions.
- the video is crappy and has a very low resolution, it does not show the house in a favorable manner
- producing a video is much more expensive then taking pictures, so if the agent don't want to pay for quality pictures, the video will most likely be terrible too and will certaily not do justice to the house.
- a few good quality pictures is more reliable and require less of the buyer's time to get a good idea of what a house looks like.
Of course the more high tech the agent looks the more appealing he will be. Not so sure about that !
That's jumping to conclusions a little bit too quickly. Video does not always 'overpower' photo.
I remember a recent listing that one of my client took over - the house had been on the market for a long time with one agent who took bad quality pictures (the infamous cellphone pictures), designed a crappy black and white flyer but did a video (a crappy video, almost cellphone quality too). The house was nice but watching teh listing was a real pain. After 6 month the house was still on the market. My client took over and we did pro pictures and a nice flyer. Only then the seller realized how the house looked different and was presented in a much nicer manner then before (even if less high tech).
My conclusion - a seller should require his agent to provide a high quality work and should not fall for the last high tech gizmo. It will take time and a lot of education for that to happen but fortunately I met a new breed of agents who are aware that this change must happen if they want to keep their commissions at a high level.
L
www.mindworkscreation.com
Photography and design studio
Photography and Design Studio
Pictures galleries at photo.mindworkscreation.com
That's a paraphrase of the comment, as I remember it.
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky
Nice stuff on your web site - nice photos of homes. Very warm feeling. I'm a web designer by trader, so branching this trade into web design isn't a far stretch. In fact, I've done a couple web sites for some local Realtors, and because they wanted pictures of the area on thier sites, I ended shooting some myself for them, for free, of course.. Maybe I should call in the favor...
OK, in all fairness to RE agents, one does have to remember that every expense they make on a listing is out of pocket until which time the house sells. That being said, they really should provide a minimum level of service....
Great advice, thanks!
www.shadowlakes.com
One other thing, if you don't mind me asking, what tricks do you use to get the correct interior exposure without blowing out the windows? Do you bracket and merge, or are these single exposures?
www.shadowlakes.com
Just speaking for myself.
For the most part it's single exposures. I rarely bracket and I have merged only a few ones because the difference of exposure between the inside and outside forced me too.
I try to keep the post production to a minimum because I don't charge a fortune to do a house. So I'd rather take one good shoot and not spend a lot of time in photoshop or so.
I pay attention to the time of the day when I go take the pictures. I tend to underexpose a little so I can push the exposure a little on the computer.
If I use a flash I keep it to a minimum, use a high ISO, and low speed, after all there is always a wall close by for you to lay against and avoid the blur associated with low speed without any support.
Of course, all the lights must be on in the house and it's so much easier when the homeowner is gone.
The biggest problem I have is to match the color temperatures from the different light sources. I often have outdoor light coming from a window on one side of the room and electric light coming from a strong source inside the room, then half of the picture has a cold temperature and the other half is warmer. The only workaround I found for that is a manual averaging on the computer. Not really scientific but convenient.
If somebody has a better trick I'm curious to hear it.
L
Photography and Design Studio
Pictures galleries at photo.mindworkscreation.com
Thanks. I did buy a flash for the Nikon, in case. The on camera won't cut it, especialy with the large 12-24mm lens. I also do have a nice Bogen tripod and a 3047 head with levels (yeah ebay!)
I read about this product http://www.expodisc.com/index.php , where you put it on your lens to set a custom white balance on the camera. Don't know if it'd work in such a mixture of light. Kinda pricy just to try it out as well...
You know, I've doing alot of research on the net about this, and you really get 2 schools - natural light vs. flash. Some say the flash cuts down on post processing time, helps keep the windows in tact, others, like yourself, use mostly natural light, and still get wonderful pics and pretty well preserved windows
Thanks for your input!
www.shadowlakes.com
It's mostly a matter of personal taste.
Flash light has one big benefit it evens everything in the room, natural or electric light, so it certainly makes things easier.
What I don't like with the flash is that it sort of wash out everything. Sort of kill the warm feeling of a 'home' and give you an illuminated room instead.
So I tend to avoid it or use it only for accents or to balance the light in a room when one side is very bright and the other side is in the dark.
But as I said it's a matter of personal preferences.
L
Photography and Design Studio
Pictures galleries at photo.mindworkscreation.com
This is a 'test' shot I did in our bathroom. No Flash. Shot in Raw, so I bumped up the color temp a little warmer than neutral, then ran a simple curves adjustment and finaly sharpened it. I was rainy when I shot it, but still blew out the windows. This is using a 12-24mm lens @ 14mm and mounted on tripod.
Of course, the trim is white, but the image was too cold looking when I tried to remove the color cast
www.shadowlakes.com
I think that on a shot like that I would bounce a flash on the ceiling or looking backward. Most of the light come from the windows, that does not help getting a balanced shot.
A mirror could help too on top of the sinks.
L
Photography and Design Studio
Pictures galleries at photo.mindworkscreation.com
A mirror would help just getting dressed in the morning! Haven't quite finsihed the bathroom yet:)
www.shadowlakes.com