Real Estate photography

I have been contacted to do some real estate photography and I am totally lost on how to price this....any help? :confused:

I know most photographers around here charge about $100/hr, then prints are on top of that. I assume they'll just want digital copies for the web, and you could probably charge a set amount for, say 4 shots, and then a per shot charge on top of that.

Alternatively, you could price by the house. I did some photos of a friend's house, just exterior, and ended up charging $120 for the shoot, retouching, 2 prints and a set of note cards. If I were doing it again I'd probably charge $150 because of the time involved, but then again, for real estate, low res images for the web don't require a lot of work for you on the post processing end.

Thanks Brad, exactly what I needed to know!

I had a realtor ask me to shoot some interior shots of his house a couple of weeks ago. He said he had the local pro doing them for him, but the last one he shot they pics weren't very good so he said he wasn't going to use him any more. He told me he charged him $35 and a ride to the house. In return the realtor got a CD with the photos. That seems a bit low to me, but then again, it was a realtor I was talking to so I dought he was telling me the truth...

A member here at PR 'Janie' use to do a lot of this work in I believe the New Jersey area close to Newark. You could search for some of her posts and comments as well.

I will not do this kind of work as the Realtors don't want to pay the cost. My flat day rate always seems 'steep' to them. Of course they usually only want snapshots of the front of the house or building and don't want their eventual commision to be cut into very much.

The one factor that is usually forgotten is the travel and the time that goes in to this type of work. The photograph may only take 5 minutes to set up or select, but there's always shadows, trees, traffic and the weather may not be cooperative on the day you have selected to go take pics! That can slow down how many photos you can make in a day.Thus, if you are charging by the photo/house/site you may seriously hamper your income potential or even lose money on the deal. That is why I work for a hourly or day rate. I won't charge for less than a half/day plus travel expense, mostly for bookeeping reasons. Plus, I've had a few in the past when I thought about doing this where it was 45 minute drive one way!

Most realtors figure out quickly they can go buy a digital camera and get what they want for much less just about the time you settle on a decent working arrangement.

Architectural and the interiors work I will do and this I seek out, but that's a different type of clientele! And they don't look at the price tag.

Best of luck!

Thanks for the info! He tried to take his own and he said, and I quote "my photography skills are terrible at best" lol this has many posibilities for me outside of real estate of course, so I will give it a shot :lol: pun intended :D

Pretty useful information. I'm interested in this field of photography so I took in mind these recommendations

I'd like to see real estate options in my city. Where can I do this? Perhaps there are some services or real estate sites.

For work or for yourself? When I was looking for real estate, I immediately started looking for options on the Internet and found a service with home in Algarve. It seems to me that here you can find many interesting options, as well as use a convenient filter to find something suitable for you, and not spend too much time searching.