Real Estate Photos - Pricing

[jstpeter]

I have been approached by a real estate agent to be her photographer for house listings based on some work she has seen of mine and how HDR photography is becoming quite popular for shooting inside homes for listings.

2 Questions:

1) Anyone with experience out there want to share how and what they price these shoots, MLS takes up to 25 photos and agent will want digital copies, and 1 to 2 180 to 360 for virtual tour photos. My thought was to price per bedroom 1-2, 3, 4, and 5 or more would be the options. This would include photos of each room plus front and back, with no more then 25 photos being sent.

2) Any gotchas I should be prepared for?

[BWangPhoto]

Just a comment and observation...Real Estate Agents are Notoriously CHEAP!

[CaptainTom]

Lucky you.
I've found that the vast majority of Realtors are pretty much penny pinchers and aren't interested in good quality photography because they think it costs too much.

If you can provide images and they obviously help to sell the property you should be able to get a good fee for them.

I'd charge by the image I provide. Some homes are 6 images and some are 16.
The amount you charge might be explained to her as an introductory offer and should she find that it really helps sales, the 'regular' pricing is XXX.

[jstpeter]

Thanks guys, she told me upfront the going rate she has heard was from $150 to 300 and sometimes $500 for really large houses. Due to the work of processing panos I think I am going to add more if she wants these.

My thoughts:
1-2 berooms $150 and $50 more per bedroom and $30 per pano package includes includes digital image of every room 1 front and and up to 2 back yard shots.

[jonney]

From a Houston guy's website: http://patrickbertolino.com/pebmlsprices.pdf

jf

[toverman]

Sounds like a really cool opportunity. If you're allowed to, I'd love to see some examples after you've gotten some assignments.

[d2creative]

Originally Posted by jonney

From a Houston guy's website: http://patrickbertolino.com/pebmlsprices.pdf

jf

100 bucks for shooting an entire 3000 sq ft house? HA!

[prncfarquad]

I shoot for a construction company. All before and after shots. I charge $65 per hour min 2 hrs (starts when my key hits the ignition, ends when I get home) then $65 per hour for PP work min 2 hrs. so my base fee is $260 and goes up from there.

[texkam]

should she find that it really helps sales

Maybe I'm being cynical but... sales could skyrocket but somehow I bet she'll find that it doesn't.

[ldelacruz]

From my experience Realtors don't pay for quality and most do it themselves. Get the homeowner to pay and you may have a deal. 15 years ago I used to charge $300 for a virtual tour and then a nationwide company started charging $99 then $50. I think they were called Virtual Reality. Like everything there is a niche and you have to go in and sell it.

[toverman]

I just thought this was funny and is only related to the OP because it's about real estate.

[tc95]

Jason,

I think most real estate people are now seeing that you need to have really good prints...in order to sell on the internet...one of the reasons I got back into photography...YES I am a realtor...we used to pay anywhere from $75 to $150 for a good set of prints...but I had too much fun...doing it myself....

Get the Widest lens you can...I use a 10-20mm Sigma with a flash and a bouncer on my a700 for most of my shots....the problem with most shots I see people focus on the furniture in the house and not the room....I do think there is a nitch for a good real estate photographer expecially for the larger and higher priced homes...Make sure you find out what the highest resolution the Austin MLS system will take otherwise she will not be able to post your photos....

Lonnie is right...the owners will pay more for it than realtors will however...I don't think your prices are too high....just try not to over proccess the images too much..if they don't look like the house..you might find that she will eventually not call you back due to poor feedback from buyers....my last two cents...don't be afraid to move furniture to make the shot work...I do it all the time...to show better flow in a room....

Here is one of my favorite shots from a house I sold....{Opp's sorry I posted the before picture...here is the edited one...}



Good Luck and feel free to PM or email me...

[Arnor]

Hi Jason,

I'm afraid I have no advise, just some comments about realtor photos. We sold our house in San Antonio last year when we moved to the Pacific North West. First the realtors took some photos themselves that came out really bad - i.e. the resizing was just horrible. So I offered to redo the shots for them and did so and I sized the correctly so the browser wasn't resizing it. They came out good. Then they sent a photographer out who took some really nice photos but again they uploaded the photos in a large size and the browser sized them down so they looked bad. We contacted them and I ended up getting the full size photos (that is the size they had on the website which was like 800 pixels on the long side) and sizing them in Photoshop down to whatever the actual size used. Don't know if it made any difference in the sale, but I certainly check out photos of places that I look at on-line:)

It appears that a lot of the online software that displays the photos leaves it to the browser to size the photo and they generally don't do a very good job at it. Things like siding and blinds end up looking like they are damaged. The first photo of the front side of our house was so bad that it looked like the house had been left in a dryer for too long<bg> So you may need to take into account making the photos sized to whatever size they actually should be.

Best regards,