Ask the agent

What does a full-time real estate photographer’s week look like?

It’s three jobs, not one: shoot, deliver, sell

You pictured a week of shooting. Shooting is a third of it.

Deliver means the gallery is in her inbox by nine the next morning. Not when the editing’s done. By nine. That’s the part she tells her office about.

Sell is the one that gets skipped. It has no deadline and nobody is waiting on it, so it slides to Friday and then to never. That’s why the calendar resets every Monday. Not because the agents left. Because nobody asked them for the next one.

Mornings shoot. Thirty minutes goes to sourcing.

Here’s the week I actually ran, block by block. There’s less shooting in it than you think.

Shoots before one. Three is a real day. Stack them in the morning and the afternoon is yours.

Thirty minutes every morning is sourcing only: ten coming-soons and ten agents into the sheet. Nothing else touches that thirty minutes. Not email, not editing, not the gallery that’s due. It’s the only block on the calendar that fills next month, so it goes first, before anything can eat it.

Sourcing isn’t selling. Sourcing is building the list the afternoon works from: who listed this week, who’s about to, who’s worth a message. Thirty minutes a day keeps that list full so the afternoon never starts with a blank page.

Afternoons sell, on the agent’s schedule

Ten first-touches a day, fifty a week. A cold text or DM, every weekday, no exceptions. The afternoon is where next month’s calendar gets built, and most people spend it editing.

Calls go Monday through Wednesday, or Saturday. Tuesday is broker open, and it goes on the calendar like a shoot. I kept that exact schedule for ten years as an agent: open houses Saturday, broker opens Tuesday. The agents you want are where they’ve always been, on the days they’ve always been there.

And the editing? It goes to an editor, or it goes after the messages. It never goes in the afternoon slot, because it will take the whole afternoon if you let it, and next month’s calendar is what paid for it.

Where that week got me: I haven’t shot a property in four months. Ten shooters do it now. That started with thirty minutes of sourcing and ten messages a day, not with better photos.

Straight answers

How many hours a week does a real estate photographer work?

Shooting fills mornings, three shoots before one. Delivery and selling fill the rest. The selling block, ten messages a day, is the part that decides next month.

When should a real estate photographer do outreach?

Every weekday afternoon: ten first-touch texts or DMs. Calls Monday through Wednesday. Tuesday is broker open, so be there.

What is a broker open and why does it matter to photographers?

A weekday tour where agents walk each other’s new listings, usually Tuesday. Every agent in the room lists houses. Put it on your calendar like a shoot.

Related questions

• Why am I booked solid but making less as a real estate photographer?
• What is a broker open and why should I be there?
• How do I find the agents who actually list homes in my market?

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.