I am currently considering starting my own real estate photography business. I would appreciate your opinion on my idea of a business model.

Clearly, with the real estate market trending more and more towards a buyers market, Realtors will need to focus more of their time and energy on effective marketing. In today's visual age, with the internet being a huge source of information for the average home buyer, I believe that attractive, well staged photographs are essential to capturing the attention of buyers who are becoming increasingly choosy. As they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Unfortunately, my experience has been that most of the photographs on the MLS, agent-created flyers or realtor.com simply do not look attractive and would turn off many buyers to contacting the listing agents. I'd like to draw on my college specialization in Architectural Art History to fill this need. I have the equipment, talent and eye to take professional, eye catching and attractive photographs of homes.

My plan is to charge agents an hourly fee of somewhere under $100 for up to 50 images of their listing, optimize up to 10 images with Photoshop (to green up the grass, adjust lighting, etc.), and provide all the images to the agent on a CD within 24 hours. For an additional charge, I would offer the option of creating a virtual tour of the major living areas in the home (approximately $75 for up to four living area tours), flyer creation (negotiable based on details), or customized websites for the listing (approximately $250 for six months, renewable at $150 for each additional 6 month period).

My fiance and I would be doing this in a collaberative effort from a home office and in the field, with me handling the marketing, sales presentations and photography, and him running the home office, accounting, webdesign, etc. According to our rough calculations, we would need to average about 15 shoots a week to make this business more profitable than what we are currently earning in our regular jobs. We have heard from other photographers (in the same state, but not the same region) that they are booking between 5-11 shoots a week, but they are not heavily marketing their services, they are limiting themselves to a small geographic area (about 15 square miles), and there is only one person running the business. I believe that in time, we could book 15 shoots a week.

I have started to survey agents in our region (I've e-mailed about 100 so far) about this business plan, proprosed pricing and offerings and have had a fair amount of positive feedback.

The challenges to me are as follows:

1. Convincing agents to spend the money to effectively market their homes. Could be come difficult as the housing market tightens in the coming months, but that could work in my favor if housing inventory rises as expected. I do have a strong marketing background though, and think that I could overcome this issue.

2. Living expenses while we work to build a client base. Start-up fees for the business itself would be about $7000. The problem is, we need a monthly income of at least $5000 to stay afloat (we live in a very high cost of living area). We could borrow money from relatives to supplement our own savings and credit cards to have a buffer of 12-months of living expenses. Unfortunately, all the information I've gotten from RE photographers in other areas has been VERY mixed about how long it takes to become a profitable enterprise, some say 6 months, some say 2 years. How do we reconcile this, and decide if we CAN be viable and not put ourselves into the poorhouse????

3. This can't be done part-time. I'd love to start this part-time while hanging on to our day jobs, but since RE agents need the photos on CD in their hands within 24 hours, there is no way this can be done on the weekends. Evenings are out because of lighting considerations.

So, in addition to the questions above, I need help with the following:

1. Does this sound like a viable business idea?

2. Do you have any suggestions on how else I can research the viability of this plan besides surveying other photographers and RE agents?

3. The only thing holding us back right now is the fear of that first year. What things can we do to help our household to continue to run with a similar standard of living, while starting up a home business? Are we being unrealistic to think we can float that first year's household expenses using borrowed money and savings?

Any other advice and feedback would be greatly appreciated!!!!

It does sound like a viable business, but probably not on your timeline. You want to both leave your current jobs and jump straight into a new business start up without having enough savings or capital to get you through the critical first one to three years.

You need to keep in mind that you won't land those minimum 15 shoots from day one. It could take quite some time to get to that level of stability.

Since your other half would be handling the business end of things (accounting) and the web site, couldn't that part of the business be handled part time while he keeps his current job?

Another option would be applying for a microloan through SBA intermediaries. You will need to provide collateral.

Do you have access to a home equity loan or line of credit?

Another thing to consider is scaling back you current standard of living while you build your business.

You've done a good deal of research already, but have you completed your formal business plan? That will be a necessity. It will help you see when you might reach break even and how much you will need for start up costs. It will force you to create a complete marketing plan (which you've already given a lot of consideration). It will give you a clear, line by line picture of your cash flow for the next 3 yrs.

You will find much more info on your start up procedures in my One Stop Business Startup Kit (see below), which also contains a step-by-step manual to show you how to write your own business plan with simple, proven techniques.

Keep researching, this could be doable with some careful planning. Good luck to you!

Sylvia
http://businessplanmentor.com
Business plan and start up resources

The previous responses all contain good advice. Here's another idea you might not have yet considered. How about cutting out the middleman entirely and target homeowners directly? Many sellers nowadays are looking to avoid signing exclusive contracts with agents who will
charge them high commissions upon sale of their home, even if they end up finding the buyer by themselves through other avenues. Unfortunately, very few of them are adept at location photography, which is a specialized field. And they have to compete with those snazzy pictures shot for other homeowners represented by agents who use the services of your competitors. Homeowners are more likely to be willing to wait a week for their shots, since you just might end up saving them a bundle. Another idea is to contact some "home staging" companies in your area and offering them a discount. They then have the option of passing along the discount to their clients as a "perk" for hiring them or keeping it as a commission. Either way, they'll be highly motivated to hire you, especially if you present them with the option of shooting "before & after" shots (presumably, they'd then have to pay for the "before" shots themselves, as these are only useful to the home stager for their portfolio). In essence, for them, it would be like hiring you to photograph the job , and getting their client to foot half the bill. They win all around. And don't worry about only being available to shoot on week-ends. You don't have to tell them you have another day job. Just say you're really busy, but could "fit them in" at the week-end. It will make you look more highly-sought. Meanwhile, they'll be booking you for their clientelle. And if you promise to mention them to the realtors you do jobs for, ... cross-pollination occurs! Moolah!