This whole experience is confirming the feelings I ve had for a long while, that a huge part of what

Levi and I haven t sold a property of our own since 2006 but this weekend we are putting our furnished rental in Snoqualmie, WA on the market. Putting this property on the market gives me a chance to eat my own dog food in the process of marketing the property. We ve spent the last week getting the place ready to put on the market. When the home you are marketing is your own, this stuff takes on a whole new meaning.
Last Monday I hired Malia Campbell to come out an shoot a cinematic video for me and we will probably get a look at the video this coming monday or so. She came out to shoot for me despite still being jet lagged from returning from Spain and having a bad cold she picked up on the way back from Europe. Thanks Malia!
I compiled miami south beach hotels the stills from shots I ve done over the years. I m using a pfretour.com tour with a custom URL as a property site . The primary reason I m using a pfretour.com miami south beach hotels tour is that I can embed Malia s video on the video page and have stills and video one site without building a custom site. The video that s on the site now is just a very old series of stills made into a video. Malia s video will replace this soon. I ll also be putting links to neighborhood videos on the site and more stills.  There are a bunch of thing s I don t like about pfretour.com tours. I really would like to have the video on the first page instead of the stills miami south beach hotels and the have the placement of the embedded video on the page closer to the top of the page but I know of no other tour hosting that even allows stills, video, maps etc. on the same tour. Michael and Alfie (the pfretour.com developers) have promised to fix these these thing but don t know if it will happen in time for my home sale.
Only the upper-end homes ($650K and above) being marketed well (tours, professional photography, rider signs that have tour URLs and QR codes and great flyers with direct links to an online listing page).
Discussions miami south beach hotels with agents clearly miami south beach hotels indicate the reason for #1 is agents just don t understand the technical aspects of how to do it. They need to be shown. Most of them don t have even have a clue what URL, QR code mean and even what the capabilities of their brokers site has.
The only tours in use by upper-end agents in this market are tourfactory.com tours. This is because tourfactory.com has invested time and money in the last 20 years educating agents. They ve come to every local real estate convention in the area in the last 15 years.
Many of the major broker sites have no way to link to the listing page on their site with a simple URL so you have to have a tour of some kind with a simple URL to be able to get people from a flyer or for sale sign to a listing site. Yea, you can use the MLS # to search.
This whole experience is confirming the feelings I ve had for a long while, that a huge part of what real estate photography/cinematography is is just training your client, the agent, in the technical aspects of how to market a property. You have to sell agents a marketing miami south beach hotels system, not just stills or video. That s what tourfactory.com does and many agents are using it. A few brokers are giving agents technical support for doing all these technically involved marketing activities.
I know what you mean about the agents really NEED to be educated. I just changed firms and in my research before the change noted that of the 82 listings, only 2 had tours. And while the broker is estatic with my skills, coupled with another agent I haven t met yet with a design background, informal discussion with other agents had the rationalized excuses of why they didn t see the need. Unfortunately, it is not just them as it is area wide. I thought it was Tour Factory, but checking, it is a competing DIY tour RealBiz360 that our MLS offers to all agents as a member miami south beach hotels benefit. Individual tours for $2, or the Gold Package unlimited tours (with additional features over single) for $5/mo plus 1 time $25 setup vs the normal $25mo/199 setup. Reality is, even at those killer prices, few people use them so my initial miami south beach hotels concers on competitive pricing miami south beach hotels were unfounded.
On a positive note, yesterday I attended a conference call sponsored by Docusign and presented by a brokerage in Texas that uses professional photography and video. While the focus was on paperless office and use of an iPad, one area really stood out on a a listing presentation. When the owner is giving a tour of the home, using evernote for notes and audio recording plus photo for each room for recall, using those low quality iPad photos in future listing presentation. Couple those photos with professionally taken of the same room and ask the future prospect which home would you buy? and you educated them on the benefits of professional photography that you will use when selling their home. The Realtor in denial they don t get the listing! While many here are not combined Realtor/Photographer, those dedicated as Photographer only may want to educate your client base on the good/bad photo technique adding value to the presentation, landing miami south beach hotels more listing for you to shoot. Perhaps even educate miami south beach hotels them on how to take really bad photos for comparison, miami south beach hotels like point the iPad/iPhone miami south beach hotels at a bright window.
@LarryL you hit the nail on the head it is not just photography it is a whole package marketing system. Many real estate photographers as well as agents don t understand this. At Powervision360, Brad and I offer complete systems for agents to purchase. Our price stands firm whether we the agent uses the whole package or not! We wish you the best of luck and please provide updates and statistics about the website, miami south beach hotels the open houses, the offers, etc.
@LarryG do not despair this agency wide monthly package is all over the place and you have to make a decision to stick to your guns on what you are offering. Enough pasta against the wall and some finally sticks. You don t need too many agent/clients at good pricing to make a very decent living. Once you have a client service the heck out of him/her and make yourself indispensable. Always have a reason to refer something to that agent that could be helpful at the end of a phone call ie..e Hey Joe, before I go, did you see the special at Costco that allows you to buy $100 worth of meals at Olive garden for $75. In $25 denominations that allows you to have some great stocking stuffer at a great price just thought I d let you know. Nothing to do with business, but it sure sticks in their memory!
Good luck Larry. Might it be the territory for the lack of technology? Although quant and scenic, Snoqualmie isn't the most progressive town in the Northwest. I'm guessing you'd see more QR codes in Belltown – no? And using Malia is great – can't go wrong there. I look forward to seeing the video.
Suzanne – Pretty neat product you have created and I love that platinum home in Arizona? I'd live there in a heartbeat. But one thing – seems this game is forever miami south beach hotels morphing miami south beach hotels into something new every day. And what a realtor and seller know on what is important to them is changing too. So I'm just not sure a package deal is the right method. I know people want to see upfront miami south beach hotels how much it's going cost. But I guess you'd just have to be more fluid in the products, that is if you re offering the full-meal-deal and not just picture and a video. I'm an over ambitious realtor and do it all myself. And what I feel the clients miami south beach hotels wants and what I feel is effective in marketing real estate is always changing.
I agree. You need to market a package deal. You need to educated agents. As a agent/photographer, I educated my entire office just by sending out my flyers of new listings. They couldn t believe the difference in quality of real estate photos. I started getting calls from agents in my offices to photograph their listings.
You also need to educate agents on how photos miami south beach hotels will bring them more business. The main part of my listing presentation is Professional Photos miami south beach hotels and Web Presence. Things have changed clients now choose the homes that they want to see by viewing listings on the web. I simply show sellers miami south beach hotels one of my listings on my site, or Realtor.com, compared to the listings on the same page. 9 times out of 10 my photos blow the competition away, and my listing stands out on the page. This alone can close the deal on getting a listing. And my photography skills still have a ways to go.
@Charlie- Actually there are two parts to Snoqualmie. Old Snoqualmie which is a little quaint red-neck town that is the remnant of a logging rail head from the turn of the century and Snoqualmie Ridge ( a couple miles away, where our listing is) that is a large yuppie bedroom community for Bellevue, Redmond and Seattle with large national builders like Pulte, QuadrantHomes and many long time upper end local builders. miami south beach hotels The Snoqualmie Ridge population is all young, high tech people the only ones here that are not high tech are agents! We ve worked in this market for about 25 years and know most of the agents.
@Charlie- yes I agree, what buyers and sellers want is changing My wife who has worked in this market wants me to do 360s like I did in 2002 and I m telling her, no we need video . I ve met potential buyers and they all have smart phones and know what to do with video and QR codes.. but 90% of the agents seem to be in a time warp. most find it difficult and annoying to keep up the the technology.
@LarryL You have made some very excellent points! Education is the key to growth. This is really true in helping Realtors raise the bar on how their listings are marketed. miami south beach hotels A total system miami south beach hotels is essential in today s landscape.
When we rolled the feature in our system miami south beach hotels to embed true full-motion videos in our tours over a year ago, we knew the flow of the presentation was super-important. It is for this reason miami south beach hotels that we chose to treat video as just another scene in the presentation. This way, the video, panoramas and stills miami south beach hotels can be organized to tell the home s story. In my view, this is the big limitation to treating a property miami south beach hotels video lik