Ask the agent
Is it too late to start real estate photography in 2026?
No. The part of the market that died is the part you were never going to win. Free shoots and phone photos killed the $99 shoot; the money moved to packages and video. Wait for a thread to say it’s a good year and the agents in your zip keep hiring whoever showed up.
The cheap end is dead. Your end isn’t
The threads are right about one thing. Free shoots and phone photos straight to Zillow killed the $99 shoot. If a phone gets the listing live by lunch, a $99 photographer has nothing left to sell. That end of the market is gone.
It was never your end. Here’s what the threads skip: agents fire photographers all the time, and almost never for the photos. They fire them for everything around the photos.
Every firing is a door. It opens weekly in every office. The question isn’t whether there’s room. It’s whether you’re the name she already has when the door opens.
The money moved to packages and video
Here is what changed since those threads were written. A la carte is where the $99 guys fight: per photo, per hour, drone as an extra. Packages are a different shelf. $390, $999 and $1,499, with what’s in each one, and the cheap guy isn’t on that shelf because he can’t fill it.
Video is what makes a busy month at my studio. The cheap guy can’t fake it. He can match a photo rate. He can’t match video.
Abidur in Riverside County went full time in March 2026 on packages, not a rate. Same flooded market everyone complains about. Different shelf.
Buy the gap in your zip
The flooded market has a hole in it, and you can find it tonight. Pull the last 20 listings in your zip. Three columns: drone, video, floor plan. Check what each listing has. Most of those columns come back empty.
Nobody in your zip does drone? Buy the drone. Nobody delivers by 9 a.m.? Promise it in the first message. I hired photographers for ten years as an agent, and I fired them for the Sunday night the gallery didn’t show up. Never for the photos. The gap is usually that simple.
What’s missing from those 20 listings is your package. Build one around the biggest gap and sell that, not a rate.
When someone asks me this in Houston, I say the same thing every time: I don’t have a problem finding agents. I have a problem finding quality photographers to send them to. 44 with a camera in a market full of $99 guys is fine. None of them are your competition.
44 with a camera in a market full of $99 guys is fine. None of them are your competition.
This week: pull the last 20 listings in your zip, list what’s missing, and build one package around the biggest gap.
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
- Is the real estate photography market too saturated in 2026?
- The $99 end is. Free shoots and phone photos killed it. Packages at $390, $999 and $1,499 and video are a different shelf, and the cheap guy can’t get on it.
- How do real estate photographers get hired when agents already have someone?
- Agents fire photographers all the time, and almost never for the photos. Every firing is a door, and it opens weekly in every office. Be the name she already has when it does.
- How do I find a gap in my local real estate photography market?
- Pull the last 20 listings in your zip and check each for drone, video and a floor plan. Whatever column is mostly empty is your package.
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.