I have to seriously wonder about the idiotekniQues strategy. Go ahead, demand cab fare, go ahead ask for eggs in your beer and the moon and the stars. All you do is price yourself out of the market.
Its somewhat my understanding that most real estate is sold through multiple listing services, so the primary Realtor listing the property is not all that likely to come away with the lions share of real estate commissions. Since your primary payee is the original agency that lists the property, you have to ask what its economically worth to them. Add in other established competition and Realators with ready access to point and shoot digital camera's and it may be a tough market to enter.
I'm not sure where you live but I live in one of the most expensive areas in the country. I give a good product. I do not rush people. I spend transit time there and back. Shooting and transport can take several hours. If going farther like say in Manhattan, transport time will be far longer. Then editing time as well. I also help with staging and aesthetics. One of those apartments on there is mine that I was a big part of decorating - so I bring an aesthetic value I believe.
I also give a fast turnaround time - if I go shoot your listing that day your images are on a private gallery that night for you to pick your images from. Within a couple of days you have all your retouched shots ready for print or web - my shots went on both mediums.
If I can't get there by train, I'll take a cab. Usually round trip for me is about $25. So for $175 they get a series of well done photos. If I can take public trans we are talking about another $10. So at 5-6 hours total you are talking about 30-35 an hour for a skilled service. In this area that is pretty reasonable. Plumbers charge more.
The fact that you say realtors can use point and shoot cameras to even compare to what service a good dslr shooter can give to me reeks of ignorance. I look at the pictures in the windows of realtors and they are often very mundane. Today I scoped out the pictures in the windows of a bunch of realtors in a pricey market with a friend. 90% of the photos were worse than mine. You get what you pay for sometimes.
If you cheapen your labor and time too much, at that point your time is not even worth it. Anybody I know that was in the market for a property usually states that most of the pictures they looked at suck compared to some of the stuff they see from the better photographers. They often just click past places with bad shots. Smart realtors see the value of catchy images. You get your work out to enough realtors and give a good product, they will come as long as you are reasonable. Now if $25 in cabs to you is unreasonable for certain gigs, so be it. I could have just made it $200 for everybody and no transport - but why do that, I can get to most of my gigs via public trans so $150 plus $10 sounds better. Methings you can take point and shoot shots of your listing and go that route.
Most listings I shot were 350-750K. $175 for great shots of that cost listing to me seems fair. I could be mistaken, but this ain't alabama real estate.
Btw I think eggs in your beer sounds like one of the stupidest sayings I have ever not heard of.
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