Real Estate Photography

[mrstravis]

I too have been very interested in this. In browsing the MLS website as well as other Real Estate pages it really looks like some of these agents are taking pictures with their smart phones and uploading them like that. I went to look at a couple of houses that the pictures interested me and found the homes to be MUCH better looking in person. It is sad when people the world over are looking at spending money instead of investing money.

I am betting that if we could hook up with a realtor and take some "better" photos of their listings for a year they would come to see that they would sell more homes faster than with their "good enough" cell phone pictures. In the end the money they invested in photography would easily be made up in more sales faster.

I would even venture that setting up a hosting site and hosting fast loading, large, well lit photos of the properties would be a good thing to do as well. Sometimes the realtor pages load very slow for people with slower internet, like I have in my work truck, a MiFi from Verizon.

Or you could set up a website that offers the service of viewing and taking photos of the homes for potential buyers. Play on people's laziness. Thus people come to you, if you get no hits or clients, then you haven't lost much. Just a thought.

 

[johnh2005]

I too have been very interested in this. In browsing the MLS website as well as other Real Estate pages it really looks like some of these agents are taking pictures with their smart phones and uploading them like that. I went to look at a couple of houses that the pictures interested me and found the homes to be MUCH better looking in person. It is sad when people the world over are looking at spending money instead of investing money.

I am betting that if we could hook up with a realtor and take some "better" photos of their listings for a year they would come to see that they would sell more homes faster than with their "good enough" cell phone pictures. In the end the money they invested in photography would easily be made up in more sales faster.

I would even venture that setting up a hosting site and hosting fast loading, large, well lit photos of the properties would be a good thing to do as well. Sometimes the realtor pages load very slow for people with slower internet, like I have in my work truck, a MiFi from Verizon.

Or you could set up a website that offers the service of viewing and taking photos of the homes for potential buyers. Play on people's laziness. Thus people come to you, if you get no hits or clients, then you haven't lost much. Just a thought.

Yeah, unless the houses were in the 1+ million $$$ I highly doubt most people would be able to afford to pay me to drive around to all of the houses they wanted to look at and take pictures for them. Now, if they REALLY wanted to do that I could make some serious dough! Too bad I don't live in an area with more $1mil+ houses!

 

[behanana]

I too have been very interested in this. In browsing the MLS website as well as other Real Estate pages it really looks like some of these agents are taking pictures with their smart phones and uploading them like that. I went to look at a couple of houses that the pictures interested me and found the homes to be MUCH better looking in person. It is sad when people the world over are looking at spending money instead of investing money.

I am betting that if we could hook up with a realtor and take some "better" photos of their listings for a year they would come to see that they would sell more homes faster than with their "good enough" cell phone pictures. In the end the money they invested in photography would easily be made up in more sales faster.

I would even venture that setting up a hosting site and hosting fast loading, large, well lit photos of the properties would be a good thing to do as well. Sometimes the realtor pages load very slow for people with slower internet, like I have in my work truck, a MiFi from Verizon.

Or you could set up a website that offers the service of viewing and taking photos of the homes for potential buyers. Play on people's laziness. Thus people come to you, if you get no hits or clients, then you haven't lost much. Just a thought.

Yeah, unless the houses were in the 1+ million $$$ I highly doubt most people would be able to afford to pay me to drive around to all of the houses they wanted to look at and take pictures for them. Now, if they REALLY wanted to do that I could make some serious dough! Too bad I don't live in an area with more $1mil+ houses!

The only way I would see the idea of someone paying to have you drive around and look at houses they are interested in then send good pictures of the house, would be if they were relocating to an area and it would be more cost benificial to pay a little money to make sure when you come to town to look at properties then you see one's you would really be interested in. You would still probably do better at that by marketing yourself to realy companies and when an agent has a relocation prospect, having the agent call you to come take pics for them specifically and keeping the buyer/agent relationship out of your hair.

 

[Bluecut]

What is a good lens for interior archetecture photography?

 

[manaheim]

I have quite a bit of experience with commercial real estate photography... and there is money to be made there.

I have enough experience with residential real estate photography to realize it's a total waste of time.

The way it works is this...

1. You have to shoot pretty much every room from at least one angle... in some cases two. I mean every room. Walk around your house and count how many rooms are in it. You might be surprised to find it's quite a few.
2. You have to shoot all the exterior shots... get the various sides of the house (approx 6-8 positions, figure a couple exposures each)
4. You then have to take these images back and process them. To do it well, you should be taking RAW shots, cropping, color correcting, and perspective correcting each one.
5. Residential real estate sort of begs for HDRs... I'm not a big HDR guy, but when I do a house, I want to do HDR because otherwise you have all these horrible blown out windows and it just looks awful.

All told, if you know what you're doing... you're going to spend at least 30 mins in travel time, approximately 1.5-2h shooting, and probably 3 hours correcting. So let's say 6 hours. If you're less experienced, you're going to spend closer to 10 hours on it total. So at $75, that means you're going to make $12.50 - $7.50 an hour.

Now divide that all up into your gear... figure a camera for at least $1000... lens is at least $500 for a decent wide angle... tripod is at least $350... remote shutter cable... $50... memory card... $100... ~$2000 if I'm doing my quick math right. 160 hours or so. 26 houses.

This is ignoring electricity, gas, the cost of your computer, the wear and tear on your car, etc.

Not to mention the fact that most RE agents don't get why better pictures are important. I did some for a friend of mine, and the pictures brought in 20 some odd couples for the open house where most open houses during that market would see 2-3. Every single couple commented on the pictures and how amazing they made the house look. The house sold in absolutely record time. The RE agent acknowledged all of this. When I told her I would charge $400-600 for a shoot (way discounted off what I would normally charge, btw) her jaw hit the floor and she told me she would never pay me more than $100.

They just don't get it.

 

[manaheim]

Oh I forgot to throw in lighting. Add $300-600 to the above figure.

btw... I shoot my RE pictures with a single on-camera strobe. Theres a bit of a trick to it. You want to fire the flash and drag the shutter. (manual, long exposure times) Works extremely well. YES you can do some FABULOUS stuff with multiple strobes and whatnot, but there is greater cost and ROI may not be there, depending on what you are working with.