A case study on staggered listing media and how the view numbers split

How was the $860 built? Bundle price or line items? I've been calling around and the a la carte adds are what get you. Stills at $225 then $150 for the scan, $175 for video, $95 floor plan, and suddenly you're at $645 before drone. Wondering whether the bundle actually saved anything or just felt tidier.

The $190 rescan is the number I'd stare at if I were the provider. That's a second trip, drive time, upload, processing, and it barely covers the day. Most shooters don't have reshoot language in their terms at all, so it turns into a negotiation every time and the client remembers the negotiation, not the photos. I'd rather publish a flat return-visit fee up front and take the friction out. @derekj19 on your question, bundles usually save the provider more than the buyer, because one drive covers everything.

Does any of this carry over to rentals? For a unit that just needs to fill without a string of showings, a 3D scan that cuts down on bodies through the door would be worth paying for. But spending 860 on a listing that rents for 1,600 is a much harder case to make.

I'd push back harder on the read than you're pushing on it yourself, @luis_carrera. An open house on day 8 isn't a small confound, it's the whole thing. Open houses get promoted by the portals, pushed into saved-search alerts, and the listing gets re-sorted in recently updated feeds. Adding media does the same re-sort. The two effects can't be separated, and the view curve on any listing decays hard after the first 72 hours anyway, so a bump at day 7 to 14 against a decaying baseline is unusual on its own. The more useful number in a case like this is showings, not views. Showings are a better signal because they cost the buyer time. Views are cheap and the portals count them loosely. The real argument for a 3D scan isn't view count, it's showing quality. When people have walked the floor plan already, the ones who come are the ones who could live there. Some agents report their showing count went down after adding 3D while their offer rate went up, which is the opposite of what most people expect to hear when they consider buying media.

Who owns the files? I'm working through licensing right now and the copyright question keeps coming up in the classes. Most photographers license the images for the marketing of that listing, and the license can end at closing, which matters if the next agent wants to reuse them or if a wholesaler pulls them off the portal. Did your paperwork say anything about the scan specifically? The hosted scan usually lives on the provider's account, so when they stop paying, your link dies.

What happens to this if the price was 3% high instead of right? The likely answer is the media buys nothing, because everyone who clicks bounces at the number, and the spend just showed more people a house they think is overpriced. Views would probably still spike. That's what makes view counts an unreliable measure on their own.

On land the only piece of a media package with real value is the drone set, and only when it is flown with the parcel lines overlaid. Interior media is irrelevant when there is no interior, and dirt listings with 30 stills of grass are not uncommon. Four aerials at different altitudes and one boundary overlay do more than all of them.

The four days for the rescan is the number worth tracking, more than the 190 dollars. If a staging schedule and a shoot schedule are coupled, every media delay becomes a listing delay, and a listing delay at typical carry cost is usually worse than the media fee. Worth checking what the daily carry was while the listing sat.

What is Matterport actually? I've clicked those little dollhouse things on listings but I don't know if that's the same product or what it costs the person who ordered it.

@megan_doyle15 it is a camera on a tripod that spins and stitches the rooms into a walkable model, and yes, the dollhouse view is the giveaway. The shooter pays a monthly hosting fee per active scan, which is why the link dies if they stop paying, as @ryanmck27 noted. @luis_carrera a similar rescan is a common story. Painter running two days behind, scan shows drop cloths, adds something like $150 and a week. It is a scheduling problem that catches almost every seller once. The fix is putting the scan last on the calendar and the trash pull the day before.

Side note from the loan file end: nice listing media has no effect on an appraisal. Appraisers work off their own inspection and the comps, and value rarely holds up on the strength of good marketing photos alone. Anyone counting on better photos to help a refinance should confirm with their own lender how that shop handles the appraisal order, since it varies.

The clause worth reading twice in a media contract is the one covering the provider's own use of the images. Most of them reserve the right to use your interiors in their portfolio and ads, which is usually fine on a listing and less fine on a tenant-occupied unit where people's belongings are on camera. Providers tend to strike it without argument when asked, which tells you it is boilerplate rather than something they care about. The other one is delivery time. @luis_carrera the six day gap was the actual cost driver in this story, and most contracts say nothing at all about turnaround. A workable version specifies stills in 24 hours, everything else in 72, and a stated credit if they miss.

Running your numbers as cost per showing: $860 over 14 showings is $61 each. Photos-only stretch was $860 across 3 showings if you charge the whole spend there, which is silly, so allocate the $360 stills-and-floor-plan portion and you're at $120 per showing for the first six days and $45 for the rest. That looks like the advanced media paying for itself, and @angela_burke's open house point still eats most of it. I'd want three listings like this before I believed anything.

Question from the capital side, is media a deal cost or a sponsor cost? Offering documents and marketing budgets show up in wildly different places. On a single flip it is obviously the deal, but a sponsor billing scans back to the property at a rate that seems high is worth a closer look to see if it is actually normal.

The staging signs off before anyone shoots rule is the one line I'm stealing from this whole thread.

None of this touches what I do. I hold land for a decade and the only photos that matter are the ones I take myself for my own records, twice a year, to see what the treeline is doing. I'm not against the spend for people selling. I just want the newer readers to know there's a whole side of this where marketing media is a rounding error and you'll never buy a scan in your life.

Starting from nothing here, what do you actually ask a photographer when you call them? I don't know enough to tell a good one from a cheap one and I don't want to learn the difference on my first listing. Is it just asking to see three interiors they shot in a similar house?