Real Estate Videos

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dylantoombs

Member
So as you all know, more and more real estate companies are uploading videos of their property. So I've been freelancing for about a year now, some big jobs but mostly small, I inquired with Houselens.com about shooting videos in my area for them and they offered me 50 to 60 dollars per project, that's extremely low, for two hours of shooting plus editing and uploading, what would you charge for a job like this? What would be a good professional counter offer, something that says im a professional with a degree but since I need this job, not scare them away. :kali:

thanks
 
Haha

Haha

HAHA, wow...

Our prices are... considerably higher than that. If someone told us that we'd laugh, I mean I think my sales lady would want to kill them. That's pretty weak holy crap.

The minimum that type of job should be is $400 to $500.

We're just targeting higher-end real estate, nicer houses, and we charge twice that.
 
yeah thats what I charge an hour for editing...so, what, I mean their obviously trying to low ball, if I come back with like 300 a project, do you think they just drop it and try and sucker someone else? or do you think their just trying to play ball
 
Hmm

Hmm

It doesn't even sound like a real offer to me, I mean that's why I wonder are they just trying to find students to do this for experience and they really don't care about quality or what? I'm not really sure what's going on there.

I guess if it was a simple house, you know your average 1,000 to 2,000 sq. ft house, nothing too large, then maybe you could still make it worth your while at $300 for a project, but probably only in bulk, like repeated work, so you could shoot a few in a day and edit a few in a day. Then it'd probably be solid I guess.

You should see what they say at a rate that would make sense to you.

What makes me angry about this, though, is seriously? $50 or $60? That deserves someone to get seriously b**ched out. Do you realize these bloodsuckers get 6% commission? I have no idea why, it's not their house, but for some reason something as freakin' expensive as a HOUSE they get 6% on! Absolutely ridiculous, and one of the highest anywhere. It's only 2% in the UK, and with today's technology is should be far less, there are too many of these real estate brokers anyway. But on a $500K house, which is about par for the course for a small, not-so-nice house in the L.A. area for instance, they're taking home $30,000 usually between two agents. That means if they paid $500 for a virtual tour and split it, they are each "only" making $14,750 now. Seriously that's some sort of incredible hardship? I don't think so! Especially if it's the difference between selling that house and not selling it. If they sold 1 more house every 3 years as a result of virtual tours, it would pay for itself.
 
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Very good point Jonathan. Taking a big chip out of their work for $50 is ridiculous.

Dylan, If they get you to make a bunch of videos for them, then they can canvas more of their properties to more potential clients. You should tell them that when you tell them to shove their offer :-)
 
haha, seriously!

Well we're actually making an offer to various real estate agents, as we are starting up, to allow them to pay 50% of our fee upfront and the other 50% only once the house sells. It could of course mean we don't make any profits for a long time on some houses, but basically if it's between sitting home and twiddling your thumbs or doing work where the costs are at least paid for, then you have a profit potential down the road, that seems to make sense. It also encourages starting some relationships where you kind of show an element of trust with the person like, hey, I understand you won't make money on this until the house sells, so let's both make our money when the house sells. I just have to cover my costs upfront, that's all.
 
The only downside of getting 50% of the money when the house sells is that you've added some burden to your side to keep track of all that in order to stay on them to get the remaining 50%. I would not assume they will remember each and every time.

Michael
 
MichaelP said:
The only downside of getting 50% of the money when the house sells is that you've added some burden to your side to keep track of all that in order to stay on them to get the remaining 50%. I would not assume they will remember each and every time.

Michael
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Well, yes, but that's also why I have my sales lady for that. She doesn't get her commission until we make our money either, so she will stay on top of them ;)
 
What are peoples experiences with doing videos on rental properties...?
We were thinking of targeting the massive student flat/apartment rental market so that, for example, over-seas students could view properties on the net....
The thing is, i'm not sure if agents would be willing to spend X amount on doing a video for a rental property that they may only make a small amount of profit on...

Is it best to stick with high-end purchase properties?
 
dylantoombs said:
I inquired with Houselens.com about shooting videos in my area for them and they offered me 50 to 60 dollars per project
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Well, that just takes the lowball cake. Are they actually hiring anyone at that rate? It's either A: a joke, or B: insane.

I think I'll put a classified ad in the paper to hire a cleaning woman for $2 an hour. Should work out great. Long as the paper doesn't charge me more than a nickel for the ad, of course...
 
Ted Spencer said:
Well, that just takes the lowball cake. Are they actually hiring anyone at that rate? It's either A: a joke, or B: insane.

I think I'll put a classified ad in the paper to hire a cleaning woman for $2 an hour. Should work out great. Long as the paper doesn't charge me more than a nickel for the ad, of course...
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HAHA, well put.

Look, even if they thought it was "easy work," that has to be a joke. I mean $60? If you drove to the location and it happened to be only 20 minutes away (unlikely, especially in L.A. for instance!), then you'd still spend 40 minutes if all you did was drive there and turn around and drive home. One would presume you had already spent 20 minutes loading up your car with the equipment, checking it out to make sure it's all good to go, charging batteries, etc., let alone actually talking to said person about the $50 they're going to pay you. So that would be one hour, and if you're bringing your gear and driving there and all that, you should get at least $50/hr. So that is a total joke. Minimum a job like that would take a few hours of editing even if you were sloppy and fast, still 2-3 hours, but more likely 4 if you're doing a good job and adding some stock music, etc., and the filming would probably take a total of 2-4 hours depending.
 
For myself, I wouldn't do it for less than a grand. $1500-2K would be more like it when you factor in everything:

-Owning or renting the gear
-Travel
-Editing and output

-Not to mention the training and skill one should have before accepting the job in the first place.

If that meant I never got work in that area, so be it.
 
the big craze now is for low end companies to advertise on craigslist, find some poor unsuspecting vidiot to shoot it for an already insulting fee, then stiff em because they shot it long distance and mailed em the tape.
there is a dallas company that specializes in this. While they don't do much volume, having no overhead does wonders. They'll be around till folks wise up and stop sending them free footage.
The ones that do pay, are in the business of moving properties. They of course would much rather pay a grand for something they can use than 350 bucks for something they can't.
In the end. If there were money to be made in video with realestate, most of here would own some. lol
 
I don't do work directly for any realtor. The only work I've done that has anything to do with real estate has been for developers. The smallest of those projects had a budget of $50k and was an all Red One shoot.
 
JonathanLB said:
Wow, that's really refreshing someone else thinks that! I feel the same way, Ted.
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It's the way I've been doing business for decades now (mainly in music, but increasingly in video), and pretty successfully if I may say so myself. Holding to your guns rate-wise will lose you some jobs, but you'll make up for it (and then some) by creating a high perceived value for your work ("I'm worth what I charge"). Of course, you have to *deliver high quality results* for all that to happen...

But if you've got some talent, that's just a matter of training, discipline and hard work.

Simple, right? :)
 
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craigbowman said:
I don't do work directly for any realtor. The only work I've done that has anything to do with real estate has been for developers. The smallest of those projects had a budget of $50k and was an all Red One shoot.
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Like they say, nice work if you can get it!
 
http://activerain.com/fredlight

The first video, with the big play button, is basically hilarious. This is what makes it quite difficult to get this type of work as a company, because this guy has what can only be described as a low-end consumer camcorder and he's walking around a house recording with it, lol, and he has supposedly gotten hundreds of virtual tours "for a few hundred bucks." Obviously if that's the kind of quality that they are ok with, how can I compete? I wouldn't even want to. I'd rather work at Starbucks and get some health benefits than turn out crappy work I wouldn't even be proud of AND on top of that not really make much money either. I can't think of any reason to be a filmmaker if you neither make good money nor do good work. The whole point is that it's supposed to be more fun work and more rewarding than a lot of other jobs, and nobody would be silly enough to call film a get-rich-quick scheme, haha, but heck I could live with not making much money as long as I was at least making work I was proud to show to other people. That... is not it.

Kind of sad that the YouTube generation has come to accept that as passable work. I consider it a joke.
 
The ironic thing is video does not aid in moving property. Vague stills are what get people out in person. Clean video is what talks them out of coming out to look at it with an open mind.

troof.
 
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