How Real Estate Image Enhancement Can Save Thousands on Professional Property Photography Fees

How Real Estate Image Enhancement Can Save Thousands on Professional Property Photography Fees

The buyer and seller market has gone to the internet and shifted to an online platform compared to the good old days of face to face encounters. The real estate market is no lagger in this trend as more and more listings are now done through websites or social media. It is through photos that potential buyers look at a home’s offerings and contact the real estate agent from there, making it a very competitive way to sell. To sustain the movement of real estate properties, the photos must be available just as fast so all listings can be put up for sale. This is where the competition among photographers tighten up.

Processing photos after a long day at the property site comes automatic without question. The real estate company is always excited to see how the photos have turned out as they will be using these in their listings. There is an expectation of speed and quality that comes with a reasonable price to compensate for the effort of taking the photos as well as editing them. Real estate image enhancement has different business models depending on how it is sourced.

As a professional real estate photographer, there are several considerations when thinking of doing the photography and editing yourself rather than constantly outsourcing it. There is an element of skill which is traded off with the convenience of outsourcing photography to professionals with real estate photo enhancement. There is also a cost difference which can make or break turning up a large profit. Finally, the ability to find and maintain a partner photographer with a realty editor service requires trust to keep the service steady but should be flexible enough to adjust to smaller or bigger requirements.

How Much is the Difference?

Cost is always the most important aspect of doing business. People are into business because they want to make money and the entire chain of businesses supplying a product or service to one another allows the circulation of value. Consider the following costs when it comes to doing the photography and real estate image enhancement yourself or outsourcing it.

  • Monthly subscription to an editing software costs around $20 per month. Annually that is $240 which gives an unlimited usage for both practice and image processing.
  • Real estate photo enhancement services with professional photography can charge size of the property and can go to as high as $325 per site. Others charge per package or per listing which can go up to $500.

Having these ballpark figures in mind, consider the fact that you need to make a profit on top of the cost and that amount will be what you will charge the real estate company. The lowest price with the best quality outputs will get the job. We recommend looking at how much your real estate partners are willing to spend and decide from there which business model will work for you considering as well, the volume of clients you may have. However, at the end of the day, taking the photos and editing it yourself comes with a personal touch and control that allows you to steer your costs and earn more, helping you save thousands and turn the supposed outsourcing cost into profit.

Why Shooting and Editing Your Own Photos is Worth It

  1. Mastery - The chance to have that growing expertise in real estate image enhancement cannot be achieved if you outsource the editing of your photos. The reason why you take your own photos is because you are preparing them for editing and the inspiration will likely manifest in high quality photos as the train of creativity is continued from the photo shoot to the editing phase.
  2. Cost Attractiveness - Another advantage of taking and editing your own photos is easily controlling costs. With the subscription fee the only cost associated with editing, you can spread out the cost of investing in your other equipment throughout the year. This helps you package your service into a long-term contracted subscription with the real estate company that does not come with a daunting price. Furthermore, this gives the confidence to your client that the process of real estate image enhancement is done personally, getting their money’s worth.
  3. Reliability/Trust – Finding the right photography partner may be tricky. It requires you to find someone you trust that can churn out high quality photos that meet the need of your client. Real estate photo enhancement also requires speed. You must assess if the editing service you plan to outsource has other clients, or they are exclusively partnered with you.

Optimizing the Money

The ability to save money and instead channel it to being profits are dependent on your ability to shoot and edit. Equipment, together with software subscription fees versus the cost of outsourced manpower who charge their subscription fee, overhead, salary, and profit on you shaves a lot of the margins you should have had on your end. But the things is, you must also have the ability to mix the business models of in-house editing and outsourcing. Think about getting more clients than your personal capacity to edit can take. It would be a dream to have all the real estate companies come to you, but having a good share of the market would be sufficient to rake the money in. Therefore, be wise to know if you have reached the brim of your capacity and outsource the ones that you know will not meet the deadline. This thinking allows you to maximize the money by making sure the low cost model of in-house real estate image characteristics enhancement is maximized before moving out to outsourcing, which may cause cost to shoot up and cut on earnings, but will still turn up a profit.

Conclusion

Always think twice when choosing to do the entire photography package on your own or having others do it. While it seems faster to contract the work to someone else, the trade-offs are too much to give up. The mastery and profit you can gain by doing it yourself saves money and grows you in your career as a photographer. No doubt that you should continue to weigh these options even if you feel like leaning to contracting an outsourced professional photography service.

 

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