Ask the agent
How do I stop undercharging for real estate photography?
You are not underpriced. You are unpackaged. Those are different problems. Raise a bare $150 to $250 and she does what agents do with one number: holds it up against the cheaper one.
One number gets compared. Three get chosen.
The quiz said undercharging. It is half right. $150 is low, but $150 by itself is the real problem, because a lone number has nothing to do but get compared.
A bare rate gets held up against the other photographer’s rate. That is the only thing an agent can do with a single number.
Raise it and change nothing else, and the agents who came for the price leave first. Not because $250 is wrong. Because the only thing they ever knew about you was $150, and now it is gone.
Give her three options and she stops comparing you to him. She picks one of yours. The comparison is now inside your sheet, where every answer is you.
Three packages, one page
Here is the sheet. Real numbers, the one our studio sends: $390, $999, $1,499. No a la carte list underneath. No "call for custom quotes." Three columns, what is in each, pick one.
Each step up adds something she can show her seller. A twilight. A walkthrough video. Not more of the same, something different she can point at in a listing appointment.
She picks in nine seconds. No quote, no back-and-forth, no "let me check with my team."
For ten years I hired photographers as an agent and I never picked the cheapest. I picked the email I could forward to my seller without rewriting.
Sheet everyone new. Give the six a date.
New agents get the sheet today. They never see $150. They never knew it existed.
Your six keep their price for a stretch. A perk, not a life sentence. Tell them in writing the date they move onto the sheet, and then move them. The ones who leave over a sheet were the ones holding your price down.
That is the fear, answered. You do not lose half your regulars, because you never asked your regulars to change anything today. You handed them a date, and new agents never saw the old number.
The arithmetic, for when you doubt it: 8 shoots x $150 = $1,200. 8 shoots x $390 = $3,120. Same houses.
We still sell a $149 shoot: twenty photos, quick, a volume play. It sits next to the packages, never alone. Your $150 is not the mistake. Being the only option is.
A price with nothing next to it gets compared. A price with options gets chosen.
This week: write your three-package sheet today, and by Friday send it to every new agent and text your six regulars the date their price moves.
The three-package sheet I send agents
Put your numbers in it before your next booking. Free. Then take the sixty-second roadmap quiz and I tell you what to fix first.
Get the sheetGet my roadmapStraight answers
- How do I raise my real estate photography prices without losing my regular agents?
- Don’t raise the number. Send a sheet. New agents get three packages today and never see the old price. Your regulars keep theirs for a stretch, with a written date they move.
- What is a good package structure for real estate photography?
- Three packages on one page. Cineminn’s read $390, $999 and $1,499, each step adding something she can show her seller, with a $149 twenty-photo basic kept beside them as a volume play.
- Is $150 too cheap for real estate photography?
- The $150 is not the mistake. Being the only option is. One number gets compared to the cheaper guy; three numbers get chosen from.
Related questions
Julian Lundgren sold real estate for ten years before he shot a listing for money. He runs Cineminn, a Minneapolis real estate photography studio, and writes these answers from the agent’s side of the table. Send a question to info@cineminn.com.