Getting Started in Real Estate Videos
 

I am looking for a way to get into doing Video Tours for some Real Estate Agents of homes which they are selling. If anybody in this business can let me know how they got started I would greatly appreciate their advice

ditto... any advice or pointers from anyone?

Todd and Alan,

to avoid repeating a lot of information that has been posted before, I suggest you do a search for "real estate" here in the Taking-Care-Of-Business forum. You should find a number of threads with useful information, hopefully that'll get you started!

- Martin

The truth about real-estate videos
 

To better understand whether or not you can make money shooting video tours for the real estate industry, you must first understand the customer. Real Estate agencies are comprised of multiple realtors who are nothing more than independent contractors. The Realtors give up a small percentage of each sell to the agency in exchange for name brand recognition and administrative services such as office space, secretaries, sales seminars, technology training, etc. etc. The individual realtors are responsible for funding their own marketing efforts. (i.e. virtual tours, newspaper listings, magazine listings, personal billboards, etc.) After presenting our product to several Real Estate brokerage firms, the top executives all made it quite clear that the agency will not pay for virtual tours. Knowing that you will not be successful in marketing your product to the various agency executives, it is important that you learn more about the individual realtor.

The average realtor is a 43 year old woman who makes around $40,000 a year. Those stats tell you a lot about your prospective customer. First, how well does this demographic use technology? My experience has been that there are very few in the real estate industry that are techno literate. You end up not only trying to market your product, but training the realtors on how use their computer as well. Not fun! Second, she only makes $40,000 per year. Now I’m sure that’s after all expenses, but you are still dealing with an individual/company that most likely grosses about $65,000 per year, if that. How many companies do you work with or hear about that take advantage of professional video services if they can’t even break the 6 digit mark in gross income? The bottom line is that the average realtor can’t afford your services unless you want to charge them less than $100 per video tour. (That’s what IPIX used to charge and seems to be all realtors will pay for these services.) Some of you might think that $100 per tour would be fine if you had enough volume. If that’s the case, let me break down how long it takes to produce a high quality video tour.

I’m first going to assume that you will not be adding a voiceover to the tour. (If you do, it will take about an hour between writing the script, getting it approved, and recording the voiceover. If you had a professional do the read, you would have to pay them as well.) Okay, so you receive the order from Joe Realtor to produce a video tour of his lake side property in Anytown, USA. The first thing you have to do is schedule a time to meet the realtor at the home. It will usually take an average of 20 minutes to get to the property. Once on location, it takes about an hour to shoot the interior and exterior of the home. After producing several tours, our team got it down to about 45 minutes. Add another 20 minutes to get back to your studio. If you are efficient with your non-linear editing system, the post process takes about 30 minutes. Once you have completed the edit and added music, it will take you about 10 minutes to encode the video to windows media format. (My favorite format) Then you’ll spend about 10 minutes uploading the WM files to your streaming provider. (I’m making the assumption that most videographers do not have their own servers.) Once the files are ready to be viewed on-line, you will want to test them to make sure they look okay. That will take about 10 minutes. After you are satisfied with the quality, you will forward the “url link” to the realtor and their web designer, and I would recommend burning a copy of the tour to CD for the realtor as well. That takes another 10 minutes or so.

So, to produce one video tour, encode to a .wmv file and burn to a CD, it took
2 hours and 35 minutes. If you divide that by $100, you’ve grossed roughly $40 per hour before expenses. Now let’s look at what you actually take home in profit.

Income per video tour: $100

Expenses per video tour:

tape stock - $3 (3 homes on one tape)
6 months Streaming - $20 (Assuming you get good rates)
Postage for CD - $2

Total expenses - $25

Net Income per Tour: $75

After all expenses, you take home about $75 dollars each tour. So, you produced the video tour for about $30 per hour. Is it worth it? Maybe so, but it's hard to grow a successful corporate video production business on $30 per hour.

The times I gave above were what we were hitting after streamlining our shooting process, worked out all the details with the web designers, trained our clients on the benefits of the product and how to use it, mastered the editing and streaming process, and found an affordable streaming provider. (Take into consideration a substantial learning curve if you are not familiar with the process of streaming video over the Internet.)

If your thinking about getting into real estate videography, my overall recommendation is to spend your time finding a more viable market. If you haven’t had the chance already, it will take you months just to figure out how the whole real estate process works and how you can best serve their needs. (It took us about 9 months of R&D and networking just to get in good enough shape to make our first sales presentation.)

If you still believe there is money to be made in real estate videography, my recommendation would be to forget about residential realtors and only focus on commercial realtors and major contractors. The best way to see if a company is a good candidate for an on-line video tour is to look at their website. If they have a high quality website, they will probably have the budget for a video tour. If it looks like their site was put together by a high school kid, they probably don't understand enough about web video to even consider your offer.

I have produced several video tours for commercial realtors and development groups. The average tour was priced at about $1000. It takes a little longer to produce commercial tours but the hourly works out to be about $100-$150.

Kris Simmons
http://www.mindyourvideobusiness.com

Real Estate Video Tours
 

Unfortunately, I have to echo what Kris said. Realtors are (1) Cheap, (2) Technologically challenged and (3) not the smartest or best businesspeople.

It's a tough crowd. First of all, most see NO need for video tours or even virtual tours, which is why less than 20% of all homes have any type of tour. In fact, in many areas, it hovers around 5-7%. And that is because one has to PAY for a tour, and realtors won't spend the money. And don't think for a moment that you will target high end properties - those agents are the worst. Many only will put up 3-4 photos (even though they CAN put up 1 or 2 dozen) because they're goal is to get the buyer to CALL them so they can personally show them the home.

Realtors have lost total control over their 'closed business model' in the past 10 years - to the internet. By only putting up some 'teaser' photos, they retain their one last way of controlling the process - by forcing the buyer to contact them (don't want to give away TOO much info!). Unfortunately, what buyers are actually doing is clicking NEXT when they see a listing with only a few photos. They don't want to waste their time visiting properties that aren't what they are looking for. And these days, with a record number of homes on the market and record high gas prices, most people are sitting at their computer ELIMINATING properties based on their internet presentation. Most realtors still don't 'get it'.

Video Tours DO work. It's a great listing tool. It sells houses. About 10% of the agents to DO understand this, who DO understand marketing, who DO understand you have to spend money to make money - THAT is your customer.

Realtors, of course, can give you the song and dance why you shouldn't list and sell your house BY OWNER (we have the experience, connections, professional contacts, etc.) However, when it comes to THEIR business, they think they can do it all themselves. So they design their own websites, take their own photos, design their own marketing, brochures, etc. and do their own tours.

And it shows. Many of these people still don't know how to send an attachment via email - ya know what I mean?

Try to convince them to follow their own advice and hire a professional, and you'll get a million excuses.

What will fuel online video for real estate is the SELLERS. They 'get it'. Totally. They understand the value. And they are demanding that their agents do video tours. After all, that IS why they're paying $20K +++ in commission, right? To MARKET their home?

Tough crowd.

So maybe that's a market to hit... the sellers themselves. Educate the sellers on the benefits of doing a video tour, and they can either insist the realtor buy it, or pay for it themselves to help sell their home.

Seems if you charged say $250 for the video tour, you're hourly rate would go to approximately $75 (based on above calculations). That's not too bad. You might not make a high-end living off that, but it's a good chunk. I wonder if the sellers themselves would pay $250 if *they* saw the benefit of a video tour. Or maybe split the cost with their realtor. I think there's a better chance the sellers are more tech/internet saavy than the realtor, so it might work.

But then again, I have no experience in this market and could be completely wrong. Just offering my thoughts after reading the posts above.

Later,
Dan

Really good advise in the previous posts.

If I can add anything to the conversation, you really need to be a business man/woman first then a videographer second. It is a very very tough sell, after about 4 years of producing videos, and constantly calling realtors, sending out packets, etc, it is finally starting to pay off.

A fancy video is great to show for a wedding or demo reel but it means nothing to a realtor.

We have come up with a very unique pricing structure that is working out much better then the typical $100 per house. You have to know you area and find out what the realtors want and provide it for them.

Wow, Kris. I want to run all my ideas by you! I had actually been considering trying to market real estate videos, but I think I'll leave that alone for now.

I have a real estate license and I know a lot of agents are cheap. The only person this benefits is the listing agent. They get paid when the property sells. The going rate of commission is 6%. The selling agent gets the 6% if they sell the property. If another agent sells the property, the listing agent gets 3% usually on a split. It's not really cost effective for them to do a video tour because other agents are also showing the property. Also, they can post a lot of pictures on the MLS that only agents can see who typically bring the buyer. If the property is priced right and someone likes it, it will sell with or without a video. Also, realtors get paid to basically open doors and walk/drive you around to see homes and get you to sign a contract. Most are not really technologically savy. I know, I got tired of being asked to take pictures of homes with basic point and shoot digital cameras.

Is this forum dead? I hope not, but that could be good or bad.I've been doing a lot of research on this topic here and on the net and was hoping someone with experience in this field could answer some questions.

Who pays for the web hosting on google,you tube,realtor.com,etc.?

In your opinion what is the best way to shoot the interiors,ie: hand held or on a tripod? or does it differ from house to house?

Do you get mixed white balance readings from outdoor light?

How long does it take to shoot a standard 3br 2bth?

What format do you shoot in SD or HD or direct to disk?

Who does the voice overs? (if any)

Different pricing structure for sq. footage?

Has anyone tried to approach the sellers themselves?

Sorry for all the questions. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.

The sites themselves host the videos on google and youtube. Another site is wellcomemat.com. We host all of our videos on our servers, others do it many different ways.

The best way to shoot the interior your going to get a mixed bag of answers it all boils down to what look you want and what your price point is.

I generally white balance my camera for every different scene.

We shoot on a tripod and I can knock out a 3br 2 bth in about 10 minutes.

We shoot SD usually to a firestore device to save our camera heads. I wish shooting HD was a good option at this point but it is not. Remember these all have to be compresses for the internet and with the file limitations both HD and SD will look about the same.

You can hire a professional to do the voice overs, I feel as though the voice overs are distracting from the video, we want people to see the house in the video, they can read the description to find out more details about the home.

We do have different pricing structures per sq. ft.

The sellers are already paying to have their house sold, Included with the agents commission is marketing. This is a marketing tool and we believe the agents should pay for the video. I have had a few sellers pay in the past but it was maybe 2 or 3 videos out of about the 2000 videos we have shot in the past 4 years.

Every area is going to be different, bigger cities are going to sell different then smaller cities. I think a lot of times people who start doing real estate tours focus way too much on the video, yes the video is important but the most important thing to make this business work is your marketing and relationship with the realtors. If you put together a professional looking video you are already leaps and bounds ahead of what they are using now. Generally improving your video is not going to make sales go up. Getting on the phone and into real estate meetings are is really what is going to make your sales go up.

Hope this helps.

Todd Kivimaki
Wow Video Tours

Thanks for the quick reply Todd.
At this point I'm just testing the waters b4 I jump in so I haven't approached any realtors yet. Getting some postcards ready to print. I want to make sure I can answer any questions they throw at me especially when it comes to web hosting which is my weak spot. They're going to ask who pays for it and how much.I've uploaded a few qt files to my local cable company but that's it. I checked out realtor.com for any info about the video tours but couldn't find any (except the benefits of having one).I don't have a server to upload to except the cable co.which only has 1GB of storage which doesn't sound like a whole lot,do you know the conversion rate for QT or flash files per Gig?
Do you back up to tape while shooting or rely solely on the fire store?
I was thinking of having the realtor do the v.o. since they know the details and are selling the prop.Maybe not.
Maybe I should approach the sellers and tell them to call their agent about my services?
I've done a tour of my own house just for practice(on a tripod, Sony dsr-370 dv-cam) and it took me 30 min !!! for my small 2 bd 2bth house including exteriors.Hopefully I'll get quicker.

Another question for anyone. Do you automatically get the copyrights to post the tours (in whole or in part) you shot for your own web site to promote your business?

Thank you.

I gave up on trying to get into real estate video a long time ago after one agent told me the reason they didn't want a professional looking video was because they didn't want people to be let down when they actually see the house after seeing an amazing looking video.

remember
"Friends don't let friends do real estate videos"


ha ha, just kidding
I hope you guys have better luck than I did!

MarkG

I'll throw in my small experience in this area as well. As most have said, realtors don't want to pay for it. But it is funny because in recent surveys of home BUYERS you see that the VAST majority are actually doing most of their search....ONLINE! Yes, after they narrow it down to two or three home, THEN they go tour them in person, but they narrow them down by using the internet/photos/video of the homes.

Anyways, I did a couple TV spots for a couple hotels once. I talked with the owner a little (the whole sales thing many have mentioned) and he decided that he wanted to use some frame grabs from my video on his website, and also decided to have me do 'virtual tours' of his rooms. First, I just mount my camera on a Merlin and walk through the rooms, then do a locked down pan of each room. Not too hard but the steadicam shots seem to be what they like as it promotes a kind of 'you are there' sense. Anyways, hotel owners may be a market that can see the benefit of video, as they are used to paying for some marketing.

When looking on Realto.com you will want to visit picturepath.com that is who takes care of the tours.

As far as web hosting just pick a hosting company and they will generally give you a good amount of space for less then $10 per month.

Gabe makes a great point the actual percentage is 83%. 83% of all people start their search for a home on the internet.

Here is a testimonial I received from a seller just the other day, I think it speaks miles about our videos:

Todd:

We have viewed our home video several times and wanted you to know how much we like it. We have friends in New Zealand who have never been to our home, but have now seen it thanks to your video. We wonder if it is possible to purchase a copy of the video. If so, sends us instructions and we will mail you the necessary payment. Again, thanks for a wonderful video. You made the home and adjoining land look so inviting.

Cheryl O’Connor
3821 West Elm Street
Lima, Ohio 45807

I'm going to keep you guys on your toes...
I look at this market like this.I shoot, edit with background music etc. ,compress it for the web then upload it to the realtors web site and any other site they are linked to and done on to the next.
I'm looking at it as "why should I pay some other web hosting site (besides my own) to stream a video that I'm not selling. Aren't the Realtors' websites linked to other websites thru realtor.com, etc? I've checked out your site Todd, Great, nice videos and also Fred Light also great, a wealth of info. He was featured on the CBS evening news about the video tours with the glidecam and no video light just ambient, looks great.

I checked out realtor.com typed in major cities on east,west coast and middle america and I could not find one "video tour" I think the industry should differentiate between "virtual" tours which came first, which is pictures stitched together and warped on either side as they spin around and looks very unrealistic and even the slideshows don't do much for me maybe because I'm a "video guy" at heart, but I guess it's cheaper,faster and better than nothing.Maybe that's why some companys offer both, and then there's video which should be called what it is"video tours" so there's no mistaking the two when you click on the red spinning house that says featured tour and the more photos button, I don't understand.
Todd There was no link to picture path from realtor.com so i typed it in and they mention the formats for the pictures but no specifics about video. They are vague about what other sites they link to besides realtor.com,maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. I've read that some companys will put your tour to utube & iTunes but I was reading on realtor.org that you should be careful posting video to free sites like YouTube because you have no control over the comments that might show up with your tour. There are online forums for people to post comments about videos. If some kids post something negative about your tour, that can become a real problem for you and your seller. Hmmmm..Still more ????
I'll keep you guys posted of my progress from time to time.
I would like to see this forum grow into something bigger someday. I typed way too much. Thanks for reading.

There is some discussion going on here http://www.wellcomemat.com/

Click on "The Neighborhood" link. You can host your video on wellcomemat for free.

Realtor.com is actually differentiating between a video and a virtual tour now. There is a red spinning house for virtual and a TV like logo for a video.

I think you are going to find that most realtors want a link, that is the easiest way for them to link to their own website and the local mls.

Good luck and don't hesitate to ask any questions.

Thanks Todd et al. I will check out the discussion on welcome mat and similiar sites also. See ya for now.

Mike.

MLS problems
 

With MLS comes some odd rules about what must be made available to other agents. For example, the video might need to be publicaly posted if part of a MLS listed property. But Corey summed up the problem above. The split interests and split commission is why realtors are tight with paying more than $200 for anything visual to market a house. Video is still thought of for super high end homes.... the kind where you contact a listing realtor and they send you a 10 mintute DVD for that $3 million property that was professional produced with cranes, steadicams, etc.

At least that was my findings from interviewing / pitching to about 5 different firms in my market. I eventually gave up when the market turned into a buyers market and prices dropped.

It was great reading these posts. i am in Australia and it is the same thing here. We produce TV commercials for a good living and i too was thinking about getting into the real estate video market. That is, till I tried. I find it amazing that the Agents here don't want it. They don't want to pay. After all, most get around $5000 commission for the sale of a house. We talked to 56 agents and while a few were interested, didn't come up with the money. I must say there is no way in hell I would do a tour for less than $500. I always value my time at $100 an hour. I would not consider shooting without using lighting etc which takes a lot more time that a job you guys say is 30 minutes. I also believe a voiceover is paramount in putting the message across. Our idea was to shoot the attractions of the area as well as the house. e.g. if the house is close to beach, show the beach. It just shows that even though I am in another country the real estate people are still the same.

I hesitate to post on this topic because I did once before and you guys blew up my bandwidth, so if you do track down my site, please go easy on my bandwidth (no link to it because I'm already using 20gb a month, without you guys going there). I've done about 50 real estate videos over the last few months at 199.00 per. That includes 3-months of streaming (progressive download to be precise). Fortunately I do other things to, but the real estate biz has been growing progressively.

The real key to real estate videos and whether or not they will be successful is LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. It has worked for me, and I expect to get busier doing it, because I live on an Island. A large island, but an island. I did much research before starting and found some data on buyer profiles. Many (as much as 50%) of the buyers in my area are coming from off the island. This is a huge thing. If people can drive 20 minutes to view the property, then they might as well just do that.

You need to know who is buying homes in your area. If you're in Fla, or AZ, or Ca, then I think there probably are age 50+ year olds moving to those markets from the north.

So, assuming you have a location that people can't easily view, and want to move there...

It is tough to get your foot in the door. In fact just getting in to demo the product is tough. I started by doing a freebie or two to use as a demo. Almost all the realtors that actually sit down to hear me out really like the product. One of the best advancements I made was to be able to integrate the videos directly into the MLS.ca site, which is far and away the number one search tool for prospective buyers. Currently, I get over 1,000 hits a month to my site from there.

I sell this primarily as a LISTING tool. The listing realtor is guarantted 1/2 the commision regardless of who sells the house. The home sellers like having the realtor spend money. I've had three jobs from the homesellers who had heard about me.

The business rule; It's much cheaper to keep an existing customer than get a new one is hugely true in the real estate video market. I have been nurturing my first clients for the last 8 months, and I try to add a new one each month. Because I host the videos, I can give them viewing statistics, which they love because they then report back to the homeseller.

Interestingly, I don't do exclusively hi-end stuff. I did a commercially zoned residence last week that was located between a cheque cashing place and a xxx video store. My properties run from 200k to 2.6mil. If I get 2-5 videos per month per realtor, then I need to work with 10-20 realtors on a regular basis. The trick to it to is trying to minimize travel time. When I deliver my invoice, I give them a box of chocolates or flowers. My best customer got a nice bottle of single malt for Christmas.

I just presented my product/service at a real estate board AGM/tradeshow, and got some great exposure, and immediately added 3 new clients. I've been trying to add entire offices at a time but that is difficult. I e-mailed a demo to a managing broker, who loved it and said I could come to a sales meeting. I was stoked because he manages 30 realtors. Well, 6 showed up for the meeting. So far I've got one job from it... But hey, perservance, persistance...

I am constantly looking to offer more/better features. I originally offered a pro voiceover option for $40, and now I let the realtors do a voice-over themselves if they want. (USB mic to laptop).

WB and Exposure are the biggest shooting issues. I custom WB most shots with a white card, and use exposure lock to avoid the annoying auto change when panning in front of windows. I use the XLH1 on a tripod. I look for movement within the frame where I can find it (ceiling fan, leaves in the breeze, waves, birds etc.) While I pan most every shot, there is a slight jitter when viewing on the web. I also find the web dulls things, so I usually bump up the gain and the saturation a little in post. I used to used some custom color presets, but always seemed to lose too much light. I have always shot in ambient light.

I work quickly on most places. Initially I shot, like 20 minutes of tape per house. Ouch! Now, I've learned to shoot for the edit, usually no more the 8-10 minutes of tape tops. It rarely takes more than 45 minutes. I use Vegas, because it's real quick and good. I shoot and capture in HDV using Cineform. Major overkill, but... I often get requests for DVD's and have done some for the homesellers at no charge, for the PR value.

I have a new client that has a couple of hi-end places and we're going to upgrade the production value (and price) on those to distinguish them from the rest.

Bottom Line: It can be done, but not just anywhere.

Good Luck if you try it.

Know The Market
 

Great information. In my case, the housing market is selling itself and realtors simply did not need another marketing tool. Also, median home prices are still below $200K (but you get what you pay for) so realtors know they need to sell the higher end properties in order to make it back on commission.

Real estate requires a lot of knowledge of something other than video productions, which means it might not be fore everyone. I happen to have worked for a house rehab company and am very familiar, but the market won't bear the product so wrong place, wrong time.

Thanks for all the great info Ken.

Forget the video business, I want to buy one of those houses! Nice place man!

How did you break into this niche? Cold call? direct mail? blackmail?

Brian,

I did one free for a 'for sale by owner' that I knew. I demo'd it to a progressive realtor. She really liked the concept and jumped on it right away, but she is just one. But then one thing leads to another. It was (and still is) a grind to get new clients on board, but once they're on... they seem to stay. I have 2 larger clients, and 4-6 smaller ones. I'm trying to add at least one new client a month.

It was originally supposed to be filler work but it's actually developing into more than I expected, so I'm going with it.

The realtor's usually pass on the contact info and I contact the homeowner directly and set up the time, which works out well.

Hi Ken. Thanks for the info. I always wondered if the Realtor is standing over your shoulder while shooting. From what I've been reading on this forum and others is that getting the first client is the toughest part. Once I get some free time I'll start pursuing the realtors and maybe some homeowners as you said.

Interesting thread. We've been trying the same thing here in the UK and much of what has been said about the difficulties is true here too.

I'm not entirely sure how you guys get round in 20 mins though, I don't expect to be on location for less than a couple of hours.

Paul.

Paul,

I take about 45 mins per. That's actual shooting time. But that's after doing nearly 50 homes. So I work pretty quickly. I just set a quick WB for each shot, and (usually) lock the exposure somewhere (for each shot), and move on to the next. Initially I would shoot as much as 20 minutes of tape, covering each room from several angles. Now I shoot for the edit much better, and rarely shoot more than 10 mins of tape, for a ~4 minute product. I budget 2 hours to shoot including travel, and 2 hours to post.

Realtors are price sensitive. I used to be critical of this (especially after paying commisions a couple of times), but after working with them, I've seen them lay out over 1k for advertising and then lose a listing. Not to mention staff and office overhead.

So if your product really helps them make money, they will use it. If you can extract $500 per house, then by all means, go for it. My base price is 199.00. I've designed it that way to try to get more volume, and build long-term lasting relationships with realtors.

Good Luck!

Just wondering if there's a real estate "season" for video tours. I can see in spring and summer people would like the lively green exterior shots but come winter it's hard to show a pretty house with a dreary grey sky and dead trees out front. Also, how many houses are empty? I've always heard it's better to show a furnished house so how do you spruce up a house when the seller has already moved?