Getting into real estate photography

Have any of you jumped into doing any real estate photography as a way to suppliment open time slots in your portrait schedule?  Are you working directly with the brokers or home owners?

For Sale by Owners you are better off going directly to them.  Otherwise the Brokers are a good place to start as they are the boss over the Agents.

Most Real Estate agents around here won't pay for professionally made photos. Most think their cell phone shots are "good enough". It's a shame, but most have no knowledge or appreciation of what good photos can do for selling a home faster and at higher prices. 

Something to try - If you can make friends with an agent who has taken shots of one of the nicer homes that they are selling, is to offer to shoot the same house and same camera positions that they used, plus a few more that you choose, to really show what can be done by a Professional Photographer using better cameras and lighting. If you do a good job and present at least 8 X 10 sized photos or larger of your shoot to them.

I think you have a very good chance of getting some future jobs of the upper class home photo work. Let them continue to take cell phone photos of the cheaper homes, but the high dollar homes deserve the high quality photo treatment. Do this first shoot entirely free, to give them some idea of what a shoot like this will be like when compared to their cell phone photos, and an estimate of what it will usually cost to have you do them. If it turns out well, you just may have a new customer. The seller may be willing to pay if the agent won't. You need to create demand for your work.

If you want more customers, you can do the same again with another agent at another office, using the first Real Estate agent as a reference. That "free shoot" should be a good money maker for you, if it goes right. Sometimes you have to invest some money and time like this to get the customer's attention, but if done well it should pay off your investment quickly. 

I'm 80, and with too much wrong with me now to do much outside my studio, or I would be doing this right now. There should be good money available if you do this right. 

Charley

  unless you go to a big and fancy brokerage, who very likely will have their own photographer already.  Others don't see photographers as needed investments.  

Have you seen the photos for most homes?  Unless you living in Beverly Hills and we are talking about a $40,000,000 home, photos are taken by cell phones