Should a 3D scan sit in the base real estate media package or stay an upsell

Question

Looking across draw schedules and construction budgets on the lending side surfaces a consistent pattern: the marketing line item on flip and small development budgets ranges anywhere from roughly 200 to 1,600 dollars on houses in the same price band, and the spread almost always comes down to whether a 3D scan is included. The case for folding the scan into a single base package: buyers increasingly expect to walk a property virtually before driving to it, and treating the scan as optional means a meaningful share of sellers decline it, leaving the listing looking thinner than comparable ones. A flat price avoids a menu negotiation and higher scan volume can lower the effective cost per property under a subscription-based capture tool. The case for keeping it a separate upsell: the scan is typically the slowest part of a shoot and the most sensitive to whether a property is occupied and tidy, so folding it into one flat price means absorbing that variance on every job regardless of property type. A vacant, lower-priced listing with a local buyer pool often does not need the same treatment as a higher-priced relocation-market listing, and a single price for both means undercharging the difficult jobs and overcharging the easy ones. The real test of either model is usually what happens when call volume slows for a couple of months and the marketing budgets get thin, since that is when the underlying cost structure of each approach actually shows itself.

jordan_ellis2 · Accepted Answer

Tender, I think the answer depends on who your client actually is, and that's the variable your budget spread is hiding.

If you sell to agents, base package wins. An agent picks one provider and wants one number they can quote to a seller without doing arithmetic on the doorstep. A menu makes the agent do sales work for you, and they won't. The scan going in the base also means the agent can promise it in a listing presentation, which is worth something to them and costs you a fixed amount.

If you sell direct to sellers and investors, the upsell holds up better, because those people are paying out of pocket on one transaction and they compare your number against the cheap guy's number. Bundling makes you look expensive on the only line they're looking at.

On your real question, which is what survives a slow stretch: the base package is more fragile, because when listing volume drops, sellers start shopping on price and a bundled number is the easiest thing to undercut. The tiered version survives best. Two prices, stills-only and stills-plus-scan, so you have somewhere to go when someone says the number's too high without cutting your rate.

And the occupied versus vacant variance parcel skipped is real. Whatever you bundle, price occupied jobs differently or make prep a condition. That's where the hours go.

nicole_adeyemi · Answer

On land the answer is neither, because a scan of an open field is a party trick. A drone flight with a boundary overlay does the real work there. For houses the case leans toward the base package, for one reason the thread does not list: the menu conversation costs the provider unpaid time on the phone with every seller. Once the answer is always yes, the provider stops selling and starts scheduling.

Should a 3D scan sit in the base real estate media package or stay an upsell

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