Pro real estate photographers answer questions about business, pricing, workflow, lenses and more in the live Q&A with Rob Moroto and Mark Morrow hosted by Ron Pepper on May 3rd, 2020.
See below for the discussion highlights about business, pricing and dealing with clients.
For the discussion highlights about workflow, white balance, lenses and shooting tips, see here.
The highlights were taken from the full discussion in the live streamed video below.
Ron Pepper
Rob Moroto from Calgary Photos is going to be joining me here to talk about real estate photography.
Rob Moroto
Hey there.
Ron Pepper
Okay. Let's bring on Jeff over here. Hey Jeff.
Jeff
Hi Ron. Hi Rob. How are you guys?
Ron Pepper
Real good. What brings you here?
Jeff
When I saw this on Facebook, I thought I'd jump in and ask a few questions because I love photography. I'm a high school teacher actually in Windsor, Ontario. But I liked doing it part time.
Jeff
I was wondering, how did you start in real estate photography? Rob?
Rob Moroto
That's a great question. Ron, do you want to take this?
Ron Pepper
Go ahead, Rob, why don't you start?
Rob Moroto
All right. Let me tell you about how I got into this. For me, I used to be a marketing director for a real estate developer. I used to help make all the marketing campaigns for multimillion dollar condo buildings.
Then, back in 2007-8, when the real estate marketing in Canada started drop down, I sort of found myself where I didn't actually have a portfolio to market anymore. I decided, well, you know what? I started my own service. Let's get out.
2009, I exited the market there. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. During the time that I was working as a marketing director, I had this guy. His name was John Sharp. He was a fantastic photographer who unfortunately passed away a couple of years ago. But I used to hire him on for all of our show homes and everything.
When he'd come, I'd say, "Okay, John, here's the ad that we're creating. Here's a proof of what the ad is creating. This is what I need. I need a shot that looks like this, is a straight on, it needs to have this, this, and this. It needs to come in here.
He would be like, "Okay, Rob. Here's the camera. Place it wherever you want. I would. I would place it in the room. Look through the viewfinder. I'm like, "Okay, so this works with this." Then he set up all the lights, click, bang. It was done. It was perfect.
After I got rid of myself, I looked at the check and he called me up and he said, "Let's go for a beer." He said, "Look, we're going to go to a launch party." I said, "Launch party? Sure. Right. Of what?" "The Canon 7D." That was released in 2009.
He told me that I should get one. After that, we did a couple of shoots together. Next thing I know my next door neighbor's like, "Hey, Rob. You've got a new camera. I've got a house. Can you shoot it for me?" I said, "Yeah, sure." Then, of course, you shoot that. The realtor looks at it.
Ron Pepper
It's the way we all start out. Isn't it?
"Do you have a camera?"
Jeff
Word of mouth.
Rob Moroto
Yep. Then the realtor looks at it. He's like, "Oh, this is really good. Hey, can you do my next listing?" "Sure." Then it's like, "Hey, I heard from," and it just, word of mouth. It blew up. To the point where I think after a year I was making just as much shooting as I was as a marketing director.
Then, after the second year, I had so much work that I couldn't hold onto the volume. Strangely enough, a family friend said, "Hey, you remember that kid that you went to school with way, way back when?" I said, "Yeah." He was like, "Well, he's 20 now." Here I am in my mid 30's.
I'm thinking to myself, okay, I'm going to hire on 20 year old. Sure. Let's see how this goes. Quite frankly, he's been with me for the last eight years. After that, somebody else came up to me. He's like, "Hey, you know this guy? He's a great guy. You should hire him." Hired him.
Then hire another guy and kept on growing. To the point where now they're all out there shooting and I'm doing stuff like this. Getting my name out there with website links like this. Please follow us.
Ron Pepper
Wade's in the chat. He says that they're... Oh, they're not allowed to do studio work.
Stick with landscapes and real estate for now. I know we're talking about real estate, but I was thinking about doing some...
I know everybody's doing the porch thing. But I was thinking why not do some, if people are wanting to do it anyway, do some portrait type stuff.
Rob Moroto
Yeah. For real estate photographers out there right now, if you're not shooting because of Covid, but you still want to keep busy, there's a whole ton of things that you can do.
Right now I'm in Calgary. It's not quite the season yet because everything is still brown. There's no green leaves and the grass is all still dead. I don't know how it is in Windsor.
Jeff
More green.
Rob Moroto
More green?
Jeff
Yeah. It's coming along. It was 71 today.
Rob Moroto
Oh geez. It's lovely. But yeah. When you go further South, it does get warmer. I know people in places where it's warmer, people are allowed to go out into some areas as long as they keep the social distancing going. But this is a great time to go out and get just stock shots of areas.
Because you know that realtors are going to be out there saying, "Hey, this home here is in a really cool neighborhood. Do you mind getting some shots of this, this, and this around there?" Usually you're like, "I got another shoot coming up. I don't have the time."
Well, guess what? You have the time right now. Go out there, grab those shots. You're not going to get harassed by people saying, "Why are you shooting this right now?" Because they don't want to talk to you right now. It's a fantastic time to get all these areas shots and your stock photography up. Next time...
Ron Pepper
It's a great idea.
Rob Moroto
Right? Think about this. How many times have you had a listing where the realtor is like, "Hey, there's a school around the corner." You don't want to go there being the creepy guy holding a camera out of a car and taking a shot of a school where there are kids coming out of the front door. Right? They're all closed. Go out there. Shoot the school right now because nobody cares.
Ron Pepper
That's another out of the box idea that, if you didn't see the last time we did this, Rob had outside the box ideas because, like you mentioned in the beginning, you come from a different, your background comes from working more in the real estate biz. You're really able to connect with them.
You had some really good ideas for staying connected with them. That's a really good one. I got to take it. I got to take that one. Go around and build up the neighborhood stock that can be used over and over. Yeah.
Rob Moroto
Exactly. If you actually see a place where there's like a restaurant, where there's a lineup of people waiting to get the takeout stuff, that might not be a bad shot either. Just grab those.
If you have a shot of, say, like a restaurant where they're doing takeout and you have a whole line of people outside, that's not a bad shot to take.
Because if you think about it, once things get better, you could go to the restaurant owner and say, "Hey, you want it? Here's a photo of how popular your place was during the crisis. This would be a great one for you to have in your social media feed. Here you go."
Ron Pepper
If you get a good shot with a good crowd. Yeah.
Rob Moroto
Yeah. The thing is, you just give it to them because, once you give them the photos, and you start walking way, they'll say, "Hey, do you do other types of photography?"
You got a client just through good will. Let's face it.
Ron Pepper
I think once you sell it to them, now you're committed to getting releases from all the people in the crowd. Pretty short.
It's good for market, for advertising.
Rob Moroto
Yeah. There's nothing better. There's no better introduction then than something that's free. A lot of guys know this. Why would you go?
Remember when you were dating, what was the first thing that you did? You went up to someone and say, "Hey, can I buy your beer?" Giving something away for free is the easiest way to introduce yourself.
The more that I'm in business, the more that I realize that business is much like high school, where the popular guys get everything. It's true. You go out, you shmooze, you know people, you get them to like you, and then all of a sudden you got more business.
So, during this whole Covid thing, we've been doing it where I made it a commitment to call two people a day just to check up on how they're doing, whether it's clients or friends or just people I haven't talked to in a while.
By doing that, I'm amazed at how many people are like, "Oh, yeah. Thanks for reaching out. Are you guys still doing your photos? You know what? I've got a listing that I don't know if I should put up. Really, you think we should put it up now? Great.
Well, have one of your guys come over." And that conversation happens a lot. So, if you are the guy that knows how to be good at keeping in touch with people, you'll do fantastic.
Jeff Lutz
Right.
Rob Moroto
And just remember, it's people.
Ron Pepper
Rob, and up there, do you compete with bigger, mid-sized companies or very many individual photographers out there?
Rob Moroto
There's around four or five companies like mine now. It's funny. Okay. So, I would say that there's three main, big companies out there, mine, and then there's two others. And we all know each other. We've all started this out pretty much around the same time.
One guy started from more of a video background and wanted to do videos for realtors. I started off doing mostly twilight photography back then. And then this other guy, he started out wanting to do daytime photography.
Had we all gotten together back then we would have a really big company by now, but instead we all just get on going our own way. Then we all just got to the point where we all do exactly the same thing, it's just we have three companies that are doing it.
Ron Pepper
Always compete. Always compete. Everybody gets better.
Rob Moroto
It really does. We're all different in terms of how we approach things and how we approach our clients and how we approach business and life and staffing and all that. So, there's enough room for everybody. There really is.
Even the small guys that are coming out now, I've seen some guys that have some wicked, wicked stuff. But at the same time, I don't know if they have the business sense to keep it running or they might be missing out on the pricing side.
There's one guy out there that's, I hate to say it, his work is just absolutely phenomenal, and he's charging $90 for it. What's going to happen, he's just going to burn out. He won't be able to keep the quality up.
Even if he does keeps the quality up, he'll never be able to grow because at that level of quality, he can't teach somebody else to do it, pay them even less than what he's making, and keep his business running. There's certain limitations and certain things that you got to do to keep the lights on and keep running.
Ron Pepper
There's a comment. Christine says, "How do you price your real estate jobs?" She says, "I live in a rural area in the Ottawa Valley."
Ron Pepper
Pricing. It's always just a really great conversation. There are tools and there's science behind it. Let's find out what Rob does.
Rob Moroto
The way that I look at it as this. Retail's easy. Okay? Retail is you have a product and then you do your markup. Okay. So, pretty simple in that sense. With what we are doing, we are taking our time, and we have to put a markup based on our time.
One of the things that happens is people tend to undervalue themselves a lot. We end up shooting and giving it away for less than minimum wage.
So, what I always look at is, let's take an idea. Okay, so how much is your time worth? If you say, "My time is worth $50 an hour." Okay, so $50 an hour.
If I was to work at a regular job, that'd be 100 grand a year. Great, but you're not working 40 hours a week, 50 hours and 50 weeks a year. You are going to be working probably around a third of that.
The rest of the time you're going to be going out getting business and stuff like that. If you look at it that way, you have to take that time and then increase it to adjust for the amount of time that you're doing other things like getting the marketing done.
So, if you upped that to around $60, $70, whatever it is that it makes and feels fair to you, stick with that.
Then you say, "Well, how long does it take me to drive out to a shoot?" Average is half an hour to get through a shoot. I'll spend an hour out of shoot and then half an hour back and then half an hour processing. So, there's two and a half hours. Two and a half hours at $70 an hour, you're looking at a hundred and what?
Ron Pepper
$175?
Rob Moroto
Right there, you've got the price. Now, $175, that is what you should be making.
Now here's the thing. People don't always want to pay 100% all the time. So, it's easier to negotiate down than it is. What I would suggest is start higher. You start at $220, $225, and then say, "Hey, you know what. We're starting this out. I'll give you 25% off."
What you're doing is, yes, you are giving that discount, but you're also keeping within the hourly where you're still valuing yourself and you're valuing your time.
Ron Pepper
I just want to add to the side to that, that when you're doing this kind of business, there are so many things that you're doing. Not only that you have done because certain amount of expertise comes into this, but I guess that goes for any job.
But there's lot of them still running your business that is not something you would be directly charging your clients for. Everything from your accounting to your storage and your backing up.
Rob Moroto
... Cleaning your gear, and the amortization of your gear. All of that.
Ron Pepper
What about just buying the gear? Right? So, when you start quoting things like that and people look at it just as per hour, I think it's something you got to consider that there's more involved with it.
Rob Moroto
Oh, of course. Yeah.
Ron Pepper
So, find out what you're comfortable with and happy with and fair, of course, to base on per hour.
Then also, when I quote things, especially when they're bigger and they're not just like one house, kind of a bigger job that may even take days, I base it on day rates. It has all that just figured in, and what I've come to find to be fair and very valuable for the client as well. That balances where the tough part comes in.
Not only to figure it out and know, but also that people don't really realize that. All they think of is, "You don't have to pay for film." That's really all we get.To this day.
Rob Moroto
Oh, yeah.
Jeff Lutz
Would you lower your hourly rate to break into the market? Would you do that?
Rob Moroto
Okay. So, yes. You can always give a discount.
Imagine this. You go up to somebody to say, "Okay. Yeah, that was $150. You've done 10 shoots with me now? Okay. Now I'm going to increase it to $175."
That's not going to fly.
Ron Pepper
There's one of these old marketing adage is that I always believed in is that if you gain a customer by discounting, you'll never bring them up. You'll never bring it up. The value is established for them, something internal, and it's never going to work to do that.
The only times I've ever really been really discount-oriented is somebody that's such a regular customer. Several years ago when I was doing more real estate, I had a couple of regular customers that would call me up one day and say, "Can you come over tomorrow?" And if I could, I would.
Sometimes I'd be like, "Okay, I have my kid with me." So they'd send someone along. We'd do it as a team. But I'd usually show up at the location, and they'd be there to meet me with a check.
They knew what they were going to get. I knew what they wanted, so over time we just made a price. That was great because it worked that way because there was no setup. Getting established with a client is costly in your time and everything for both of you.
Rob Moroto
I thought relationships were tough.
Ron Pepper
Learning what they want, learning how deliveries work, and are you going to get paid in a reasonable time? When none of that is mysterious anymore, those are the times that I have decided to handle it that way. To keep that customer because they do like what I'm doing.
But other people are saying that they'll do it for less. We had to find arrangements.
Jeff Lutz
So you would discount then as opposed to at the beginning or anything like that.
Ron Pepper
Yeah. I'm really anti-discount in general.
Rob Moroto
Yeah. Let's take a comparison. Take a look at things that are a value to people right now. So, look at a TV. Would you ever buy a TV full price?
Jeff Lutz
No, of course not. No.
Rob Moroto
Why? Because they're always discounted.
Jeff Lutz
Right. You can always find it cheaper somewhere else, right?
Rob Moroto
Yeah. But if you're getting an iPhone or a Mac, those things are almost never on sale.
Jeff Lutz
Right.
Rob Moroto
So, people are happy to pay full price for them. If you look at it that way and say, "Okay. If something never goes on sale, then it has more value."
And people will see the value, appreciate the value, and there's a certain psychological thing that happens where people look at it and say, "Yeah, I paid full price for this, but why did I pay full price for it? Well, because it's better."
And that's not a bad place to be where people think, "Oh, I paid more for these guys because they're better."
Be that person, and you'll do a whole lot better. You'll have better clients, too.
You'll have people who appreciate what you do and the work that you do rather than the people who are nickel and diming, because those are the people that are going to complain about every single shot to try and get another discount from you.
Ron Pepper
I'm bringing in Mark Morrow. Hey, Mark.
Mark Morrow
Hey, Ron. Enjoying the conversation. I was listening in the car.
Ron Pepper
So, Mark, what's going on, man?
Mark Morrow
The place where I worked or in my day job, they're already talking about going back to work full time, and I'm not going. So, I'll have to figure out something else. Went back into photography full time, I guess.
It's been fun listening to you guys talk about real estate photography though. I appreciate your insights, and how you price a job is very similar actually to the way I price a job. That's nice to know. I had no idea.
Rob Moroto
I know a bunch of guys out there that are looking to go online. They find out what their competitors are doing, and then they try and undercut it.
Unfortunately, if you have a model like that, there's always going to be somebody's that's going to undercut you. You're just going to sink. It's a slippery slope, and it's fast.
Ron Pepper
Can I just say out loud for whoever sees this? If that's how you price it, if you look at everybody else's prices and they say take off 10% or something, come on. What would you guys think about...
Because I was saying I'm anti-discount, which is true. Not that I don't do it, but my background comes from hospitality industry. There was always this discount and that one, when they were acceptable. What is it about? Some things can be yield managed.
Airlines and hotels, they yield manage for the price based on the business levels and everything. Other things that's just not allowed somehow, and that's just something we accept for some reason.
So, I guess what I'm getting to is instead of offering discounts to get new business, what about if you're going to discount, just discount it 100% for the first one. First one's free or whatever, and see if they like it. If it's worth it to you, if you're getting started, and you have the time...
For me when I was getting started, I would spend so much time processing those jobs to try to figure out my way. Well, first of all, I have stuff to learn.
Rob Moroto
You know, this is a great question from Christine here. Do the photos that are processed have to be licensed? Okay. So good question.
Mark Morrow
No, not for me, but yeah.
Rob Moroto
Yeah. So, okay, in the States and Canada, photography is considered a creative work, just like music, like anything that's written, anything like a painting. It is considered a creative work.
So you actually own the intellectual property of it. You have the copyright for it and you can yes, from there, license it out. And that's just based on how the copyright laws work right now. If you want to give ownership of it, you have the right to do that as well.
You can sell ownership of it. We sell the license to it, simply because for the most part, we want to hold onto the licenses of our work.
Mark Morrow
Yeah. It's a matter of verbiage perhaps at that point, however you want to phrase that with them. But I don't want them to feel like that they have to purchase that image from me again.
Rob Moroto
No, and that's...
Mark Morrow
You know.
Rob Moroto
And we always say, we can always stipulate that into the license and say, "Yeah, you have a 99 years unlimited, non-transferable to be able to use this for any marketing purposes that you have for..."
Mark Morrow
Yeah. Other kinds of work, yes, but for MLS real estate work, no. But for other high end things that are for advertising purposes, obviously that's a different ball game entirely.
But for this kind of thing, for MLS real estate work, which is a very practical, realistic entry into the photography community, into the photography world, if a person wants to, has interest in photography or videography now, because obviously, to Christine's question, video has become a very necessary evil in the world of real estate photography.
And so, the nicer the property, the higher the demand for those types of services indeed. And I've done, I've done a handful of those myself and some aerial work as well. But again, that's standard fare now in most real estate situations.
So if you find yourself, if you find that service required of you, those types of the tools required to provide a high level product are becoming more readily available to the average prosumer and entry-level real estate photographer.
So, there are real tools now to make a lot of really excellent... The key really is telling the story of the home. What tells the story of the home? To me that's how I look at it now.
I used to look at it in terms of f-stop and shutter speed. But now I look at it as, what tells the story? Anytime I pick up a camera now, that's the question. What the story? Because I'm wasting my time if I don't tell the story.
Rob Moroto
Of course, and you know what, I think when you talk about the stories, that's something that we do definitely want when it comes down to the bigger projects where we actually are being paid for the... How do I put this?
I don't want to sound like an ass saying this, but where we're actually paid for the time that it takes to actually do the job right. Rather than getting the piecemeal, "Hey, I just want real estate photos," which, I think for us, what we've done is we've packaged it out.
We've standardized it to the point where it's almost like working in a factory where we can produce great looking photos consistently over and over and over again. And I can send one guy or I could send another guy, or I can send any of my staff out to do these and they'll always come out looking the same.
And I like the fact that we can do that for the realtors there.
But when it comes down to, of course, for the bigger projects where it's like, we're shooting show homes or community shots for a new area development, that's when you definitely have to look at it and say, "Well, what's the story? Who are we targeting? What's the message that's going to really connect with them?"
Mark Morrow
Absolutely.
Rob Moroto
Actually getting back to video, have you guys started playing around with video with the new iPhone?
Mark Morrow
You know, not... I'm picking up all kinds of B roll. I don't know what I'm going to use this stuff for, but I am stacking up my photos with video clips of all kinds of things from golf to water puddles, to whatever it may be, but it's making a lot.
Rob Moroto
So we got - where we got this, the DJI Osmo Mobile. And this phone, put them together...
Mark Morrow
Perfect.
Rob Moroto
And Oh my God, I go onto our website. We've got some sample videos of videos that we've done for realtors and builder spec homes using that set up.
Mark Morrow
Yeah., I could see that.
Rob Moroto
It's ridiculous. We can shoot a place in around 20 minutes, processing it in around 40 and we can process it all on an iPhone. And so what we've been doing is we've been doing these iPhone videos, but at the same time we've been telling our realtor clients like, "Hey, we can actually teach you how to do this because..."
Here's the thing with social media right now, everybody's on social media and everybody's getting more and more involved on it, but realtors and actually most businesses can't afford to keep up the amount of content and volume that is necessary to keep a professional looking social media site like the big companies.
And so the only way that you can compete is to be able to shoot your own stuff. And so we've started doing this where we're trying to teach people, "Hey, this is how you shoot video using your iPhone and a small gimbal.
And when you can't do it, we'll come and shoot it for you," kind of thing and it's working out really well.
Ron Pepper
Hey, there was a comment that I thought we could bring it back to a pricing discussion that I think is important. Wade is mentioning that he was waiting a while to get paid.
And I think that's one of the things with real estate photography, with all the pros and cons with every kind of business you could ever find there's pros and cons, and so one of the cons is that it's not the highest paying kind of work. And I frankly expect to get paid immediately.
Rob Moroto
You know what, there's... I agree. Get paid right up front if you can.
Ron Pepper
And I expect that for like existing clients, maybe again, that's part of what we were saying before is that you're getting to know each other and maybe they have their process. Okay, fine.
But if you say, "Look going forward, here's what we need to do." So just like another two cents.
Rob Moroto
Yeah, no, we do the same thing where we've got an online booking platform where whenever somebody new books online, they submit their credit card and it's preauthorized so that at the end... Like we still do once a month billing at the end of the month, but we've got the credit card on file, so as soon as it's done, we press a button and boom, they're charged.
So they don't exactly pay upfront, but they give you the information and you can charge it.
Rob Moroto
Yeah. We do have a couple of clients that are more net 30 net 60, but those are clients where they're doing 12 to 20 listings a month, so we give them a little slack on that. And I think that's perfectly understandable.
They've got a bigger accounting process than the average realtor does. And of course, there's always the case by case.
And during these times with Covid, we've had realtors come to us and they're like, "Okay, I've got six new listings, but I can't pay you until like June. Is that okay?" And I look at them and think, "Yeah, you know what? We're here to help. Sure. That's fine."
And I talked to my staff, I'm like, "Look, this is what's happening with this client here. Let's see what we can do to just help them out because they're suffering." And you know what, it's when people are down, that's when you rise to the occasion and help out more.
Rob Moroto
Christine's come up with a couple of great questions. First one she said was, "Do you charge extra for video?"
Yes. Always charge for your time. Your time is worth money. You are worth money. Don't ever give that away.
Ron Pepper
Do you do it kind of modularly? Like A and B, and then that's it?
Rob Moroto
Yeah. What we would do is we would look at it and say... We go off it as how do you calculate the time?
And so, for example, if we already know that our pricing structure is based on the half an hour of driving in, half an hour of driving out, and half an hour setting up, half an hour shooting, we already know that we're committed for an hour and a half there.
If we know that we're going to do a video and we say, "Okay, video is going to take half an hour to shoot," then we tack that on. We don't need to tack on the extra 30 minutes and 30 minutes for the drive time.
So we can give a discount based on the fact that we're not driving there, but it has to be communicated to the client that yes, it all has to be done in one shot or else I'm going to charge you for that drive time again.
And so that's how we would do it. So it's like, as an add on it's this.
So that's why the bundled packages can work so well where it's like if I do the virtual tour and the video and the photos, and it's all just one guy that's doing it, then here's the bundle package.
Mark Morrow
And then the next question that comes in to me is Mark. "What if we do like all of them in the same day?" And then you're like, ah, yeah.
Rob Moroto
But you have to do them all in the same day.
Ron Pepper
But that's your day rate.
Ron Pepper
Ok, I want you to go shoot four hotels in one day.
Mark Morrow
Yeah. A lot of these realtors that I've worked with in my town weren't familiar with the quality that was available to them on a regular... They aren't in tune with this kind of stuff like we might be or something as photographers.
I go in and sit down with them at the conference table and show them the possibilities. And I've even had them say, "Hey, can I just hire you? Can you just work for me?" I was like, "No, I would, thank you. I appreciate the sentiment but..."
Mark Morrow
And when it comes to pricing to answer that question just really quickly, I'm sorry to step on you is I really do try...
I don't know if it's just in my nature or what, but I really try to find out what they're comfortable with because a lot of this video stuff is new terrain to them and it just adds up to another investment they have to make for a property that they hope sells.
So will the video really help sell the product or is it just another piece of cash that they're throwing into the wind hoping that it'll help? So if I can genuinely...
And usually, like you said earlier, Rob, it's about relationships. If they get comfortable with you as a person, and they know that you're just going to take care of them, you're not going to mess with your price.
You're going to do whatever it takes to get them what they need on time and quickly. And I turn over as quickly as I possibly can.
Rob Moroto
So I was going to say with the video stuff and virtual tour stuff, you're absolutely right. You got to understand what the client is doing and what they're looking for.
But the other thing is this, sometimes it's not about will it sell the place? Sometimes it's more of a will it get the client? So if you've got a realtor, that's like, "I don't know if I should do video or if I should do a virtual tour."
Before Covid, I used to say that, "You know what? Virtual tours are not necessarily going to sell your place, but what it might do is it might secure the listing."
Nowadays, we say, "Yeah, you need a virtual tour because nobody's going to actually go into the homes right now." So it's a it's a different mindset. And you got to make sure that you communicate that to your clients.
And as well, with videos and virtual tours, we've been talking with a lot of our clients and saying, "Hey, you should or should not use video or virtual tours for this one because virtual tours are a great for a demographic that is younger, more tech savvy."
So, if I go up to a realtor and they're like, "Oh yeah, we're trying to sell this apartment style place in a senior's residence." Guess what? A virtual tour is not going to work unless you're catering to the kids that are buying it for their parents.
Ron Pepper
How are you defining virtual tour?
Rob Moroto
Oh, like a Matterport or an iGuide.
Ron Pepper
So, 360s in 3D, not a slideshow, right?
Rob Moroto
No, not a slideshow. Not a slideshow. This is an interactive 360 where you get to look all the way around on something.
Rob Moroto
But, the other thing is when you start looking at things like video, video actually works better for an older demographic because they can actually sit and watch. They'll take the time to look through it.
And as well, they're also very good at reading descriptions. So, based on who you're targeting to buy the place, you will start looking at it and saying, "Okay, what is the best medium to communicate the message to them?"
Ron Pepper
That's a great point.
Rob Moroto
And then Christine's last question was, "What is the contract cycle, how do you go through a contract with a client?"
Rob Moroto
And my recommendation is you do it once, depending on who it is, if it's a smaller client. So, if it's just one job for a realtor, tell them what your rates are, tell them when you're going to get there.
I don't think you really have to worry too much about getting a full on contract with them. And then what we do is we just write our terms actually onto the invoice, where it says, "By paying us, you agree to the following terms. You have a 99 year license to use these for this person and that purpose here," and then send it off that way.
When you get into a larger job... So for example, if you're shooting show homes for a builder, then yes. Get into a contract. Stipulate who owns what, what the timeframes are, what the deposits are, what the payment terms are and get all that in there.
Ron Pepper
Yep. Good points.
Mark Morrow
Definitely a difference.