From the desk:Real Estate Photography / Video / 3D

$185 a listing for rental photos. Should I just buy a camera?

I manage 22 doors for three owners and we shoot every unit that turns. My photographer charges $185 for a standard set, about 25 images, delivered next day. Last year we turned 14 units, so that's roughly $2,600 in photo spend, all of it billed back to owners as a marketing line.

One owner pushed back on the invoice last month. His argument is that my leasing coordinator already walks the unit with a phone for the move-out condition report, so why are we paying someone else to walk it again with a nicer camera.

What I have: the photographer is reliable, shows up within two days of a request, and the units lease faster than they did when we used phone photos. I can't prove the second part cleanly. My average days on market went from about 21 to about 13 over the same stretch, but I also changed how I price and I started listing before the unit is fully vacant.

What I'm unsure of: a used body plus a wide lens and a tripod looks like $1,400 to $1,800, which pays for itself in ten turns if the only cost is the gear. That's the part I don't believe. My coordinator makes about $24 an hour and I have no idea how long editing actually takes.

The decision in front of me is whether to keep the outside photographer for all 22 doors, keep him for the two nicer buildings and go in-house on the older stock, or buy the gear and see what happens. I'm leaning toward the split but the owner who complained owns the older stock, so that's the one where I'd be experimenting on someone else's vacancy.

Answer

5nataliehsuSO1BPRO7

The gear number is the small number. Editing is the one that gets people. A set of 25 interior images with any kind of window balancing is an hour or more for someone who has done it a hundred times, and your coordinator has done it zero times, so call it two hours for the first dozen jobs. At $24 an hour that's $48 plus the shoot time plus the drive, and now you're at maybe $110 a unit with worse photos and a leasing coordinator who spent half a day not leasing.

The other thing your owner is missing is that a condition report photo and a listing photo are opposite jobs. One is supposed to show the scuff on the baseboard. The other is supposed to make someone click. Same room, different work.

If you want to test it, do it on your own unit if you have one, not on his.

2 replies

1mitchell_ray4 Get yoursPRO6

I came at this from the tool side and got humbled. Bought a decent body and a 16mm, figured a camera is a camera. What I didn't realize going in is that interiors are a lighting problem before they're a camera problem. Bright window, dark room, and your phone actually handles that better than a cheap setup because the phone is doing the blending for you. To beat it you need either flash you know how to aim or bracketed exposures and software, and that's the two hours @plumb is talking about.

On your days on market, I wouldn't hang the argument on 21 to 13 when you changed pricing in the same window. Your owner will pick that apart. If you want a number he can't argue with, ask your listing platform for views per listing before and after. That one moves with the photos more directly than the lease date does.