Photography and Video in Costa Rica » real estate

Real Estate Photography Tips For Realtors – Don’t Do it Yourself, You’ll Lose Your Commission Check…

Toh Gouttenoire — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:39:27 +0000

Casa Puro Dieces – Playa Tamarindo, Costa Rica

I found this link to an article by Josh F. Sanders who is a Real Estate Broker and the Founder of Shiloh Street University in Seattle, WA, an online marketing school designed specifically for Realtors and agents.

Josh says:

“…it all came down to the listing pictures they saw online. That’s one of the essential real estate marketing tips for listings! Give buyers a great picture and they’ll jump inside the house that day. Give them a “do-it-yourself” picture and they’ll move onto the next home. The listing pictures make the difference, especially when you spend a few bucks on professional real estate photography!

Even when the listing pictures were better than the actual house, guess what? It still got the buyers inside! That’s your goal as a listing agent; get as many showings as possible. Professional real estate photography makes that happen!”

I point articles like this out because they offer good marketing copy for real estate photographers. Josh has some pretty good catch phrases for real estate photographers. Some photographers have links to these kind of articles on their sites.

To Sell a Luxe Apartment, No Ordinary Snapshot Will Do. NYT article.

Toh Gouttenoire — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 20:35:30 +0000

Another great article about real estate photography and its importance in dragging prospective buyers to a “live” visit and an easier sale.

David Paler purposefully strode through the cloud-nipping stretches of an $8.25 million Manhattan apartment, took in the set before him and called out demands with the directorial authority of Martin Scorsese. Then he assumed his position behind his camera, nodded in satisfaction and began shooting away.

While Mr. Paler may not be a renowned filmmaker or the favored photographer of the model Gisele Bündchen, his work is as scrutinized and touched up as any feature film or Vogue shoot. Mr. Paler photographs apartments for sales and rental listings.

These photographs, the real estate equivalent of head shots, are the bait that lure buyers to Sunday open houses. When these photos work, they help buyers picture themselves holding parties in their dining rooms.

Brokers hope that these photos will persuade bidders to pay more. At their worst, they invite derision for trivialities like a preponderance of throw pillows, causing buyers to move on to other listings.

“They’re huge,” said Suzanne Johansson, a broker who is selling an apartment at 111 West 67th Street that Mr. Paler was photographing. Photographs, she said, determined whether buyers were “going to be interested or not.”

It does not take much time with a real estate photographer to learn how deceptively hard taking marketable shots can be. Mr. Paler compares some shoots to “diplomatic missions” where you are “walking on egg shells.” Even at a professionally designed apartment like the West 67th Street home, Mr. Paler negotiated with two brokers and a stylist about dragging an elaborate dog bed out of a shot, moving around chairs and risking the safety of the selling family’s pet frog by unplugging its tank.

He tensely called for colorful items like plants and cookbooks to enliven the apartment’s neutral shades and added a basket of lemons in a photo because, “Lemon fresh — it’s psychological.” (He turned down a stylist’s offer to add a Buddha.) Toilets and trash baskets never stay in the picture. Through the shoot, he periodically glanced up at the horizon to track the ominous, chalky clouds. He would brighten skies later by combining shots and adding in light. In this market, he said, sellers and brokers were especially concerned that photos were flawless.

“It’s very acute right now,” he said. “Brokers are the psychiatrists. We’re kind of like the psychiatrists to the psychiatrists.”

Some of these photographers, not surprisingly, also do fashion and magazine work, but a few focus on only real estate. They are paid by brokers, and their fees vary, but a typical two-hour assignment, including travel time, may cost $250 for four published shots, and editing may take one more hour.

Caryn Leigh Posnansky has spent the last 16 months shooting apartments for sale, ranging in price from $250,000 to $19 million, for VHT, a Chicago-based real estate photo agency. Her less glamorous assignments have included scooping soap out of New Yorkers’ soap dishes and persuading one seller to throw away the bouncy chair he kept for his 3-year-old.

At a 19th-floor studio at 150 West End Avenue, she found herself with plenty of clutter to clear. The apartment had a renter who was less concerned about making the place listing-ready. Ms. Posnansky and a Corcoran broker, Sheila McCarthy, feverishly moved around books, took out recycling, removed mementos from the refrigerator and even pushed a desk chair into the hallway to present the portrait of a pristine and uncluttered apartment. After capturing her shots, Ms. Posnansky returned every book, magnet, fortune cookie and dead plant to its original location.

“They’ll never know we were here,” she chirped while wheeling a desk chair back into the apartment.

Some photographers spend more time physically transforming spaces. When Nico Arellano, a former set stylist from Uruguay, came in to photograph an eighth-floor, $2.3 million three-bedroom at 530 East 72nd Street, he realized that a couch and a pair of chairs swallowed up the space and did not show how large the living room actually was. Mr. Arellano, with help from two Halstead brokers, Ann Bialek and Madalyn Robbins, moved an entire living room of furniture. He would later edit the flat-screen television out of the shot.

“Sometimes we literally just change everything around,” he said.

There are more technical ways to make, say, a Lilliputian bedroom look merely small: using a wide-angle lens to fit the entire room into a single photo, or shooting the room at an angle from a corner rather than straight on.

“The wide angle is a must,” Mr. Arellano said. “The corner thing is my preference.”

Even a meticulously kept $1.15 million one-bedroom at 39 East 12th Street, with an accepted offer no less, benefited from a little magic. Its Halstead broker, Jane Greenberg, said that in this market she did not want to take any chances. So she hired Jay Bierach to take additional photographs highlighting the renovated windows and kitchen. On a recent overcast morning, Mr. Bierach wheeled in his camera and lights. For nearly an hour he snapped away and tried to add light with camera and flashes. Then he wrapped it up. He would have to find more sunshine back at his studio.

“I try to use as much daylight as possible,” he said. “I do what they want, and then I do what I need to do.”

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

Published: June 21, 2010

Real estate photography in Costa Rica: www.bidrop.com

“Paradise Lost: No Condos for Oasis Investors”

Toh Gouttenoire — Fri, 21 May 2010 18:27:18 +0000

Photos from Toh Gouttenoire Illustrate the Tico Times article “Paradise Lost: No Condos for Oasis Investors” (by Adam Williams) about the Tamarindo development.

Short Shrift : Hired to guard the construction site at Tamarindo Oasis, José Alberto Vargas, 59, from San José, claims he has not been paid for his past year on the stalled project, only given some food.

Shells with a View: Tamarindo Oasis Condominiums, sold on promises of paradise, await resolution of a financial conflict in a case that is winding its way through Costa Rican courts.

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Horizonte del mar #201 – Playa Langosta – Real Estate Photography

Toh Gouttenoire — Wed, 05 May 2010 21:58:37 +0000

It is always a pleasure to shoot in Playa langosta especially at Horizonte del mar, right on the beach…

I’m not a big fan of HDR (High Dynamic Range, when you mix different exposure of the same scene to avoid burned or under exposed part of the image), so I had to light full power my new SB 900 and my faithfull SB 800 to fight that strong Costa Rican sun… even if I admit there is two photos in image #3…

RPM Services specializes in the management of luxury residences and condominiums exclusively in Playas Tamarindo and Langosta. Visit them here.

Real Estate photograpy in Costa Rica

Casa Mirador – Playa Tamarindo – Real estate Photography

Administrator — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 01:07:21 +0000

This was a shooting I made for Sol Realty, a Tamarindo based Real estate company.

The major challenge was to find the angle for the whole house shot, and the famous “twilight shot” also known as “The money shot”. This kind of cliff house is the perfect candidate for an helicopter shot, times being difficult ,even if we have available a pretty inexpensive gyrocopter in Tamarindo perfect for aerial photography (adrenaline rush included….). I found access to a tower, the only spot that could give me the whole house and also the ocean, I shot it from the staircase in a realy uncomfortable position holding the tripod as still as possible over the window… There is always an angle, find it…

Real Estate photography Costa Rica

Two point of views on the same propertie. Madoff's Penthouse: Messy or Meticulous?

Administrator — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:00:18 +0000

I really enjoyed this article from “The Wall street journal” where you can see two point of views on the same property, one by Mary Altaffer, the Associated Press photographer documenting as realistically as possible where the Madoff were living and one by Travis Dubreuil working for Sotheby’s International Realty, touching up the shots to show the best as possible the apartment. Check it out.

Realtors still in the market for professional photos, especially for multi-million-dollar estates.

Administrator — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:13:57 +0000

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but when it comes to real estate, they can translate into millions of dollars.

Here an other article about Real Estate Photography, that easily can apply to the million dollars houses here in Costa Rica.

Please check our package for Real Estate Photography in Costa Rica or contact us with any questions…

Online is the new position, position, position… (for Realtor)

Administrator — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:42:20 +0000

Another great article about real estate and the importance of on line Marketing. Here is how it start:

MEET the new breed of real estate agent. Online specialist Paul Osbourne, in his mid-20s, sold this double-fronted Federation house in Brunswick last month without hanging its picture in a shopfront window or printing hundreds of glossy brochures.

Instead, he blogged about it on Twitter, advertised on Facebook, listed it on four real estate sites and paid Google each time it guided a user to his advertisement. He also made a short video about De Carle Street, where the house is located, and posted it on his website.

By the way here is a video made for “Los Altos de Eros” when the earned two 2008 Tripadvisor.com Travelor’s Choice Awards:#1 – Best Luxury Hotel in the World and #1 – Best Service in the World…

Photos Can Sell Your Home… or Sink It… So think about it…

Administrator — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:57:54 +0000

…and I should say hire a pro for that, but it’s kind of obvious, so I won’t say it…

Here is a great article about Real estate photography, sure it’s about the USA but it works for here (Costa Rica).

If you’re selling in this market, whether you own a $100,000 starter house or a $1 million luxury residence, you must make sure your home looks its best online with as many high-quality photos as web sites allow.

If you doubt the importance of this, consider that data from the 2007 National Association of Realtors Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers show that 73 percent of buyers drove by or viewed a home as a result of using an Internet site and 57 percent eventually walked through a home viewed online. Even more convincing, the same study showed that buyers looked at properties with six or more photos online 299 percent more often than other homes.

Well numbers speaks a lot and usually Realtors loves numbers…

In this article you can also find a few tips to make better Real Estate photos, and yes I’m saying that usually Realtors are not great photographers so at least if you’re not hiring someone that knows his job, try not to make that million dollars house look like a shack…

It is really something that I don’t understand, when a million dollar house, with a wonderful ocean view, 5 bedrooms, etc… is listed with 5 photos underexposed, awfully frame and with all the flows you can imagine. It upset me not (only) as a photographer who can see the beautiful matter that has not been used but also as a possible customer (well, OK, I admit that I don’t have, yet, that million dollar for that house…) who is receiving an offer for a big investment in a trash bag when it should be presented to him on a silver tray… From the seller point of view I also think it gives an idea of the degree of (des)interest the realtor put in the property.

OK, this could sound like I’m preaching for my church… but once again, look at the numbers:

If you doubt the importance of this, consider that data from the 2007 National Association of Realtors Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers show that 73 percent of buyers drove by or viewed a home as a result of using an Internet site and 57 percent eventually walked through a home viewed online. Even more convincing, the same study showed that buyers looked at properties with six or more photos online 299 percent more often than other homes.

So, basically, you need photos to illustrate your listing, and good photos…

More Real estate photos here, packages here or contact us (bidropcom@gmail.com) for more infos.

Toh Gouttenoire/bidrop.com

Real estate photos make online home listings stand out.

Administrator — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:55:46 +0000

Here is a great article that explain one more time the importance of photography, and I’ll say professional photographs, to make a property stand out of the listing.

“If a buyer is coming from out of town and they have two days to look at houses, which 10 do you think they’re going to ask the agent to show them? The ones that look good,” Schmid said. “People make the decision in one to two seconds about whether they’re going to click on that house.”

View photos at SmugMug

Here is the full article:

Real estate photos make online home listings stand out – St. Petersburg Times.

For more information on our packages here.