It is crucial to make sure you’re operating a profitable real estate photography business to be successful and keep your business expanding. Read our tips below about pricing and becoming a more profitable real estate photography business in no time!
Always Charge by the Property, Room, or Square Foot of Area
In other photography businesses like wedding or event photography, it’s common to charge by the hour. However, with real estate photography if you price by the hour then your clients could view you as milking the clock from them if they think you’re going to slow. Even if you weren’t milking the clock and actually just taking your time to get the best photos clients could still get the wrong idea.
Always make sure you are working as efficiently as possible while still taking your best photographs of the property. Over time, will you start to get a better grasp of how long certain properties will take depending on their size. From here, you can convert what your hourly rate would be into a more direct price and you will be able to charge by the property, room, or square footage. Whether you charge hourly or by the property size you should roughly earn the same amount, but if you charge by the property with a more direct amount the clients will view the price more honest and won’t think you are milking them for more money if you charge hourly.
Factor in All of Your Work and Overhead Costs
Even though some photoshoots can only take a couple hours there is a lot more work behind the scenes that you do from preparing your equipment, driving to the location, creating a contract, charging batteries, post-producing, and much more. This is all very time consuming and is all a part of your overhead costs.
All of these extra overhead costs should be included in your pricing since all these overhead costs will take a lot more time than actually shooting the property. This is known as the cost method of pricing and should be included to make sure you are more profitable.
It’s also important to add up how many clients you are able to take on throughout the week or month. This will help you determine whether your real estate photography business will truly be profitable or if you need to adjust your prices. If you were profitable on one job doesn’t mean you will be profitable on others and can sustain a business like that. It’s vital to make sure the weekly or monthly numbers add up to grow a successful business and determine if you need to adjust your prices accordingly.
The Psychology of Pricing
Offering different packages with your real estate business is common. Usually the small package will be the most affordable to your clients while the largest package will be like the gold standard of packages, usually for your high-end clients and will be the most expensive. Most clients will probably lean towards the middle package which would include everything your client would desire, but at a more reasonable price in their budget. You shouldn’t expect every client to be purchasing the biggest package, but if the majority of your clients are purchasing the smallest package you should consider lowering your prices. On the other hand, if the majority of your clients are booking the best, most expensive package then you should consider raising your prices.
Many real estate photographers adjust their prices frequently to find those perfect price points to be profitable while attracting a lot of clients in their target market.
Understanding Property Values
The value of homes in the area that you are photographing will determine your overall prices. If you typically do work in the same target market where all the homes are about priced equally than those prices for those homes should remain the same, but if you took on a new client in a higher valued home then you should raise your prices. Adjust your prices accordingly for the value of the home you will be photographing.
However, if these new clients with higher valued homes question why the price increased you will need to be able to explain to them the reasoning for the increase in prices. This could be because of several things. One example could be it’s a larger home and there are more rooms and more space to cover. Some of these potential clients would resist the offer and back away, but some of these potential clients would understand the price increase and the reasoning behind it and hire you for your services. Over time, you would be opened up to a new price bracket to work in and new clients to gain from working with the clients who accepted your higher price.
Becoming a Profitable Business
Growing a profitable, successful real estate photography business can be challenging. Take these 4 strategies listed above and use them in your business model to become a profitable business and succeed!
