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Real Estate Video
Hello,
As a Videographer and a prospective first-time home buyer.. i see a huge need for real estate videography in my area. Has anyone tackled this service before? And if so, how did you drum up business and houses to shoot?
Thanks in advance.
Pat Bohan
Cinematographer / Video Producer -
27 Replies
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I started to explore this before I moved out of the country last year. I don’t have any practical experience but these are the challenges I saw while investigating it:
1) Real estate moves pretty fast unless it’s a high-end home ($4-$5 million+) so you have to shoot, edit and upload/post the final video for the agent very quickly. Sometimes when a home becomes available, offers are received and it sometimes goes under agreement before it even hits MLS or has an open house. <-This is just from my own experience in buying/selling a home. 2) I think you have to have a fairly high volume to make any profit in this area because agents aren't looking so spend big $$ for a video. I'm talking under $100. I charge that much for a couple hours of editing, so it certainly doesn't include driving to a location, shooting, editing and providing deliverables. Perhaps the high-end homes have a large enough commission to include a decent budget for video. That said- It is certainly growing in popularity and has been a trend for a few years now. I've seen plenty of real estate videos online so people must be profiting from it. If you wanted to develop a client list, you could just shoot your own house or a friend's house and set it up like a real estate video with some simple narration, then contact agents with a 'this is what I can do for you' type of pitch. You could sell it along with additional videos, if they're a big enough outfit, to do agent bios, stories about the community, real estate trends, home buying tips, etc... Good luck with it and let us know if you find it profitable/ worth the effort. Chris Dolan
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By the way- I’ve seen previous discussions on this topic so you might want to try a search of this forum with the keywords ‘Real Estate’ for more information.
Chris Dolan
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Sounds like a great way to work your tail off and not make very much money. There is a homes showcase on one of our local channels on Sunday morning at like 5am – basically it is paid programming by a real estate franchise in the area. No doubt realtor websites are doing videos – likely on the cheap. But if you look at realtor.com – the publicly accessible way to view MLS listings, there are no videos.
I would talk to local realtors and see what their interests are. But don’t ask them if they are interested in video because you are giving them a simple yes or no question and you know what the answer is going to be. Rather, tell them what they can get and how you can do it for them.
Having looked at some houses for sale a few years ago, about 60% were an absolute disaster, and video would only make them look worse. So only the higher-end houses that look like a museum inside would be conducive to video. In other words, not all sellers are truly motivated to sell.
My two cents – which is about what your average realtor will likely be willing to pay.
Mike Cohen
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One of the only comments that I would add to this thread is that there is little chance to make any money on this kind of work, unless you come up with a predetermined templated design into which you plug in snippets and clips for the audience. Anything else is going to be a total loss of money and time. Few realtors are going to spend any real money and so you must make things as fast and painless as possible. If anyone wants anything outside the template (anything “original”)’ they need to book that under contract and for far more money.
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You might be better off hosting a 1 hour seminar for $249 where you teach realtors to use a flip cam and upload themselves. Give them a camera to take with them and a full instruction sheet on how and what to shoot, how to narrate, how to edit it & upload it. They may just get fed up with doing it and then pay you; or maybe they shoot it and you edit it and upload. Make it VERY formulaic.
You’ve seen the quality of their flyers, they tend not to spend money.
Way back when, when panoramic first came out, we were right on the verge of charging $500 per pano – seriously, we had customers. Then literally the next day Kodak and Motorola (I believe) teamed up and was giving it away! They told you to shoot 36 images – a whole instant camera’s worth in a circle – and they’d create the pano for free. Ugh. We never made a cent. And now for something completely different… I got out and the other guys went on to become https://www.spinimagedv.com/. Fun times.
Steve
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I was asked to produce some video like this at a couple of sites around 50 miles from our office. The client wanted 3 different houses to have 3 minute videos each. They offered £200.
It would have taked the best part of a day to drive, shoot and edit the 3 films and undoubtedly would have needed tweaking after client had seen the finished results as they had virtually no idea of what they wanted it to look like.
I didn’t do it – but I would think that if an estate agency that was dealing with properties of £1.5m+, they might be able to justify more budget – but with the property market still stuttering around the UK it doesnt seem a viable business until that happens.
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Realtors tend to not spend much money on their listings if they don’t have to, although they have no problem parking their BMW in the driveway!
That being said, my last realtor who sold me my condo was very generous of his time and even attends the semi-annual condo meetings so he stays engaged with the owners.
I laugh when I look at realtor.com – a big ticket house will have a picture of the house and no other pictures. Buyer beware, if you get a picture of the side of the house and only one angle of the kitchen, run away.
Mike Cohen
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These guys have been developing a business model for a couple of years:
They link video producers and Realtors, then host the video tours.
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Real estate is funny.
In our city, not many people even know it exists but there is a very stunning house on the mountain overlooking the city that’s been on the market about four years. Very museum quality, Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired Prairie-School design. 17,000 square feet and the original asking price was more than $14 million.
It had several price reductions over time, and had most recently dropped to just over $5M. And now it’s in foreclosure.
The funny thing is, about a year ago we inquired about shooting a commercial production on the grounds (the place really is like a museum and would be a great shoot location), but the owners wouldn’t even consider it. They wanted the house to stay a “hidden gem.”
Not a very good theory if you are trying to move property.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Watch this video from that website. He was talking about rates ($50) at the 13 minute mark into the video:
Randy
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