Video Tours
 

Hello All,

I am new to Real Estate videography and had a few questions for anyone with some experience. I have been talking to a Builder and they have around 7 communities they need tours done for. I have a good idea on what they want I just dont know how to price it.

They are wanting a nice street scape of the community and then have some info/clips of the surrounding area and city that the community is in. Also have text overlay with each feature of the series of homes this community offers. They want b/g music with voice over to help the video flow.

Is there a "going" rate for something like this? Does anyone have any experience in this field? Thanks for your time and hope to hear from someone soon.

Chris Barton

You can perform a search and see several threads in this forum that talk about this topic. After producing a home tour demo several years ago and not knowing about how the real estate industry works, I realized that I just wasted alot of time. At least I have a nice demo though.

I think it depends on the location and the price of the houses as to how much you can charge for this type of production work. What you described sounds like they want something nice. I would say you would never get a typical day rate of $650 for you and your gear and then $75-$100 per hour for editing but I would start at $500 and no less than $300 per house. But before you procede, you need to figure out if you're going to charge for each home seperately or a flat day rate. I would charge for each one seperately because a flat rate means you work forever for the same amount and they will take full advantage of a flat rate. You're going to find out real quick that it's alot of work so don't underestimate the time involved. After you figure out how you're going to charge for the work and how much, you need to approach them with a figure which would be your bottom line. If they can't or won't do it for your bottom line, walk away. Good luck.

Thanks for you advice. I was talking with someone else and I came up with a rough idea on what I thought would be a good price and it was $425 per which sounds about right from what you are saying. So where did your Demo lead you? Was this not worth your time or just not what you liked doing? Again thanks for the Reply.

Thanks,
Chris Barton

Nowhere. It's just something good to have if there's another project with similar needs. I used a 20 ft jib for the exteriors and just did a room by room montage with music for the interiors. Of course the realtors really liked it but there's no way they would pay $1500 for each house. I wouldn't pay that either if that house was in an area where it would sell fast anyway or if its value didn't justify it. That's what I meant about learning about real estate and the realtors' profit margins depending on the area.

To me, shooting real estate isn't the most fun but if it pays well, I can look over that. When you usually get $650 per day for shooting and then $100 an hour for editing as opposed to a flat rate of $300-$500 for shooting AND editing, I would say it's not worth it. Now, if there's alot of work over a period of time, then the reduced rate per unit is managable and acceptable.

I tried it and didn't go anywhere...
 

I tried out this line of business last summer and it didn't go anywhere for me. I have a friend who is a realtor and she let me use one of her houses to shoot my demo. Keep in mind that this was for 100K-150K house, but I was only there for an hour. Editing took me an hour or so, I dropped in some simple background music, a simple voice-over.

I ended up with what I thought was a very nice 2-minute tour of this house.

She really liked the video, as did everyone in the realty office. However, they weren't willing to pay $55 per house.

They said that they really liked the product and wanted to keep the one that I made (I gave it to them.) They couldn't justify spending the $55 per house vid when they pay only $25 a month for some photo realty site and get unlimited listings.

So I tried and failed. Maybe I should have visited a realty office that dealt in higher value homes. But then I could see the video being longer and me spending more time shooting and editing. Then the price would just go up.

I'm still on the fence about the issue. Maybe I'll revisit it in the future...

Hard nut to crack
 

$55. wow. I tried this a year ago and priced the walk throughs (not just pan & scans) starting at $125 for a 3bed, 2bath house covering all the rooms and yards. Most realtors just BSed an interest wanting to seem like they drive more business, but honestly I don't think they believed that video would bring anything more that still photos couldn't. Part of the problem could be the default house lighting (houses are rarely properly lit for video) makes a house not look very good and a realtor does not want a house looking anything less than great.

It was tough. I made my demo, shopped around with at least 3-4 realtor / brokers and never had any interest. Follow ups didn't get anywhere either.

Video Walk Throughs seem to be the domain of the very expensive.

Now I did sell video archiving for insurance purposes. One lady had a nice estate, horse barn, lots of antique cars, fabulous landscaping, and a large gun collection and wanted everything documented for insurance purposes.

That was a 1.5 hr shoot (45 minutes of tape) and about 30 minutes to edit & kick off render. Got $200 for that job. I see the insurance video production being of more interest than realestate walk throughs. Unfortunate but we can't make people need our service.

jason

What you should do is get with the builder, do their 7 properties, do a 1/2 hour show, get sponsors like local carpet, tile and maybe get home depot to sponsor it and put it on local cable. There are always people looking for homes, and let's face it the pics on the internet aren't enough for most people. The realtor takes them and they really don't show the homes that well. Yes this is more work but could be more profitable for you.

Good luck.

Hi,

Saw the postings and spiked my interest.

The taping for insurance purposes..I'm in FL and good time of year to do this with hurricane season. What would you suggest in the area of marketing something like this? I guess so many people now have video cameras they could do it themselves but the retired population here may not have as many cameras available. I was thinking this might be a good avenue to pursue to make a few extra dollars so I can buy the extra pieces of equipment I've been wanting. Any thoughts on how to locate a few customers?

Best Regards,
Lisa