The Importance Of Real Estate Brokerage Photography with Virtuance

Brokerage Insider

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There are lots of ways to help sell a home faster, but there is no more sure fire way to make sure to do your clients the best service possible than using professional real estate photography.

Even if your brokerage's average sales price is not $1 million or more, you can use professional listing photography to stand out and keep brand consistency. Listen in as Jeff Corn, the CEO and founder of Virtuance, discusses the importance of this consistency.

TRANSCRIPT

Eric Stegemann: Hi, everybody, and welcome to Brokerage Insider, the podcast where we interview the leaders in brokerage and technology. I'm your host, Eric Stegemann, the CEO of TRIBUS. Today on the show, we have Jeff Corn. Now, Jeff is the CEO and co-founder of Virtuance. It's a leading photography vendor to the real estate industry. Thanks so much for being on today, Jeff.

Jeff Corn: Thanks for having me, Eric. Excited to be here. Appreciate it. Yeah.

Eric Stegemann: So tell us a little bit about Virtuance?

Jeff Corn: Virtuance is a photography and visual marketing partner to the real estate industry. What that means is that anything related to listing marketing across the nation, that's that is what we focus on. It's all that we do. And we're very fortunate to partner with tens of thousands of real estate agents and brokerages in across the entire country. And we've been doing it for four, ten years. We celebrated our 10 year anniversary this year.

Eric Stegemann: Congrats. That's awesome. That's we're very, very close to you. We're just one year past year at TRIBUS at eleven years now. So, you know, we all started around that that same time. And I find that a lot of the companies that started in that ballpark where you were kind of competing up are fighting against what was going on after the downturn. I find you're more resilient and tend to stick around longer. Right. So tell me what was asked me.

Jeff Corn: Why did you start the company like first period of time ever? Right. And my answer is, is probably similar to yours would be that, you know, at that point in time, there's only one way to go. It's up. Right.

Eric Stegemann: So darn right. Darn right. Yeah, that's the way I was looking at it back then, too, was that, you know, that in the real estate industry, we fortunately with my brokerage that I previously had things were going pretty well because we actually had contracts for doing foreclosures and things like that. But in the tech space, I felt like there was going to be a reinvigoration for it. And it sounds like you did, too, around the same time. So what got you into the photography side of the business?

Jeff Corn: Yeah, good question. So prior to the founding Virtuance, I was in the commercial real estate space. I was I had come out of graduate school and want and thought I was going to be a real estate developer, worked for a commercial rete in acquisitions and then worked for most recently prior to starting, Virtuance worked for a small real estate development shop in Denver. And part of my role there was to market all of the properties that we would build and bring to the market. And one of the things that I would do in that role is to hire a photographer. As soon as we finished up a building and we were getting ready to lease or sell it, we the first thing that we did is made a phone call to a photographer and had that photographer scheduled to come out to market the property. And when I found out in that process, after doing it five or six times was that one, it was very expensive. I could not believe how much money we were spending on photography, too. It was incredibly time consuming. What would happen is I would I would make a phone call a week or two or three later, I'd have somebody come out and they would spend, in many cases an entire day or multiple days on site shooting photos. They would bring a whole light set up with them and sometimes have an assistant. And then after that, it would be crickets for about a week or two or sometimes three before I would hear back when they would provide us the final images.

And so and the images were fantastic, but it took the entire process, took three weeks and was incredibly expensive. And I would end up having, you know, 10 or 15 images of that property. They were incredibly impactful for what we did. But I had to start scratching my head after doing that four or five times and spending a lot of money to say what is going on in this process that is actually creating making it one take so long and to making it cost so much.

And so in that in that way is kind of a classic, I guess, entrepreneurial challenge of thinking, gosh, there's got to be a better way. And so that that led me on a journey where I started getting much more interested over many months in photography and understanding what was happening in that process to see if there was a way to do a better. And about six months later, I guess you could say the rest is history. I partnered up with a good.

Friend of mine to co-found Virtuance, and we identified at the time that the biggest bottleneck to value priced photography that was awesome and had huge impact was all about the image processing. And so our focus was all about from the beginning, building an image processing system that was artificially intelligent, that would allow us to automate the majority of that process so that we could produce an incredible result that we knew was going to get results for agents and also not take a ton of time nor cost a lot of money.

Eric Stegemann: So that's thirty thousand foot. You know, that's that's very insightful and obviously you're looking to solve a lot of problems that that agents have. You know, there's so much to unpack there. Let's start out with where you started with commercial, because I'd love to understand a little bit more about what you saw in the differences, because I know that when it comes to commercial, when it comes to buildings and rental units and things like that, a lot of those folks, you know, professional photography is a requirement of them.

And so 10 years ago, you were doing the photography 10 years ago. Did you see many agents, many residential real estate agents doing professional photography, or do you think that's more of a newer, almost mandatory requirement these days?

Jeff Corn: So I think that what's clear is that it's becoming more and more of a requirement and that it is driven by the consumer, it's driven by what the consumer wants and needs, and it's driven by who the consumer is. So if we if we rewind 10 years, I could tell you that. And there's a there's dozens of studies that we could quote and talk about, and they're all going to tell you something a little bit different. But at the end of the day, 10 years ago, I would argue that somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty five to 30 percent of all residential real estate listings had professional photography. Today, that number is over 50 percent. And obviously it varies greatly depending on the market. We see a lot more professional photography in urban areas than we do in rural areas. We see a lot more professional photography generally and higher price point markets than lower price point markets. But at the end of the day, it's really about who the consumers and the consumer today is, not the consumer of 10 years ago or 20 years ago. The consumer today is a consumer who grew up in a digital world, who is used to seeing everything visually. And the consumer today is somebody who is generally tech savvy, meaning that they expect a lot from their advisers. They expect to be provided information and then allowed to make their own decision as opposed to in the past. A lot of times I think that a lot of real estate agents felt that their role and at the time, perhaps it was more appropriate, was about making the decisions on behalf of the buyers or the sellers, educating them, but then helping them make the decision. Today, the buyers really want to see things for themselves and they want to know that they have a trusted advisor behind them. So at the end of the day, that that all speaks to a vast increase in the percentage of properties that have professional photography and professional media. And it's only going to continue if I if I have to put any money on it.

Eric Stegemann: Well, do you think this is just something that popped in my head? Do you think that it also coincides with not only the tech savvy ness and the fact that most consumers start their search online today? Do you think also that the the rise of sites like like Instagram and those types of sites where photography and you see people really spend time framing a shot versus, you know, the Facebook of two thousand six? When I joined Facebook in 2006, it was a, you know, a photo on a BlackBerry that nobody possibly would ever say was a good for a photo that I shot on my BlackBerry. But I uploaded it to Facebook through the phone. Would you say that the the rise in quality of those sites that are not real estate agents, not professionals, have driven part of it? Or do you think it's really just the fact of that the average consumer is expecting more from the professionals that they work with?

Jeff Corn: It's a great question. I think it's actually both, I think that like we like we mentioned, yes, clearly the consumer is expecting more and they're expecting to to interact with real estate in the same way they interact with other things in their lives. Which gets to your point right where we have. It's not a coincidence that if you look at. the most heavily trafficked websites on the Internet, one of them is Amazon. Another is Instagram. And we could go on and on. And what is the key component of those sites? Right. Whether it's Facebook, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, you name it, it's imagery. It's that that they that these companies have identified that showing images is the most impactful way to impact and influence consumer behavior. And it's not an accident. Right. So so it's kind of chicken or the egg. You could say, well, is Instagram the most popular site online because of the fact that the consumers like images, or is it because of the fact that Instagram kind of new, this new the psychology of buyers and then built a business around that? And you could you could go either way? Right. But the point is that there is a ton of research. This is not about people's beliefs. This is about a lot of studies and research that indicate that consumer behavior has actually shifted. It has completely changed from 10 years ago. And the reason is because of the Internet. It's because of the fact that we've got we've got five senses. Right. And the sense when you're on the online, which is where most people spend most of their time throughout a workday, there are only there's really only one sense that that can be activated.

And that is your visual sense. So until someone invents a smell of vision. Right. Or you'll feel a computer or whatever you want to call it, when we're online, we're looking we're seeing things with our eyes. And the brain can process so much more information visually than through text or from seeing or I mean from feeling or smelling. The visual cues are so much more impactful. So what's happened is that's why Instagram is as popular as it is. People like looking at pictures, period. They are drawn to pictures, period. The picture is always going to be so much more impactful than the paragraph of text that you have below it. And so all of that work is really to say the same old adage, right, that everyone would have told you 20 years ago that a picture is worth a thousand words. Right? It's so cliche, but there's a lot behind that. It's very true. And it drives consumer behavior today. And so I guess for listeners who are interested in that topic, there are a ton of awesome, really fascinating research studies. If you Google consumer behavior and the Internet right, you'll actually identify and be able to understand how the Internet has completely changed, how people choose to buy things.

And a lot of it is about the visuals.

Eric Stegemann: I think that's I think that's a really important aspect because without thinking about it too much. One of the things we know at Tribus from our brokerage websites is the number one thing people go to on a listing page is the photography. Right. And the number two thing is if it's there is a virtual tour and then everything else falls down, the list like number three is actually the mortgage calculator. It's not the the write up about it. And people think that, you know, the write up is so important. And I think what we've had happen over the last 15 years is the write up became less and less and less important because people just go straight to the photos. And frankly, I think consumers have gotten to a point where they know that the marketing remarks on a listing is is realtor speak, where there's the jokes about using the word. What does cozy mean? Cozy means really, really, really small. Right. And those sorts of things So instead of reading these marketing remarks that are on there, they just go straight to the photos to visualize what it would be like living there. I think that's so, so important. Now, you know, you talked about getting to 50 percent of things that are using it and obviously from going up from far less than that before, 10 years before. But from what you're saying, it seems to me like every single listing should have professional photography. So how do you convince an agent in St. Louis where I have my license and I own a brokerage, how do you convince somebody there where they're selling a two hundred thousand dollar house that they need to do professional photography on the listing?

Jeff Corn: Absolutely. I'll be I'll be frank with you that that we often at Virtuance talk about there being two types of agents, and it's no disrespect to any anybody in the business, but the two types of agents that we see are, frankly, those who get it and those who don't get it. And when we talk about getting it, what we really mean is that that those agents who understand that in order to sell something, you have to market it. And I think that oftentimes we get so caught up in the industry, in the macro trends of, oh, it's a buyer's market or it's a seller's market or things are flying off the shelf. So I don't actually need to even do anything to sell it. And I think that what we've seen over the 10 years we've been in business is that the agents who have that mentality are generally, all due respect, short lived in that it's a short term mentality. They're thinking much shorter term than those who recognize that that investing in marketing your listings is a twofold proposition. One, it is about selling the listing. All the statistics that anybody can ever share with you show definitively the impact, the significant financial impact to an agent in having professional photography. But even more than that, regardless of the market that an agent finds themselves in, it is about marketing the listing in order to market yourself, because the reality is that whether the property is two hundred thousand dollars or two million dollars, the first thing that a potential seller is going to do either right before the listing appointment or right after the listing appointment, is they're going to Google your name almost every time and they are going to Google your name.

And the first thing that's going to come up is or your listings, either your past or your current listings. And they are looking for how that listing is presented and how it compares to other things they see in the market. And it only takes three clicks. Right. And if I could show you, if we were sitting in front of a computer together, those three clicks. Right. In order to see all of the current or past listings of any agent. So your work, it's all about the reputation that you are trying to create, that you're working hard to create so that you can then sell yourself to your next potential seller as a listing agent, so that that's the first piece. And then and then getting back to sort of the more basics of it. Our job at Virtuance is to drive traffic to your listing. The reason that we want to drive traffic to your listing is, is because it's a pure supply and demand equation.

The more traffic we drive, the higher the price is that you're going to achieve and the faster you're going to sell the property. And so even if at a two hundred thousand dollars price point, we are able to help sell that property five days sooner or achieve an extra 10 showings, the impact of that could be as much as 10 percent, 20 percent from a sales price standpoint. And what if we do the math? We're talking about an extra ten thousand dollars.

Right. So so there's that value that even in a two hundred thousand dollar listing, if we're able to get five percent more because we drove more buyers and created a created some competition for that listing, if we get a couple thousand dollars more, that's a big win, not only for the agent, but also maybe more importantly for the seller, because then there's that much better chance of getting a referral from that. So it's really the full lifecycle of the real estate agents business that we're trying to impact. It's not just about that one listing.

Eric Stegemann: I think that's important. And so what I think you're overall saying is, yeah, it's an investment in the two hundred thousand our listing and you hope you get lots more two hundred thousand listings because of it, or you at least get some four hundred thousand on our listings because what you're doing is is better than what probably the average competitor in your space is doing. Right.

Jeff Corn: It's definitely all about a competitive advantage. There is no question I'll use all these.

I'll use the Colorado market as an example. We were founded in Denver. We still have our headquarters in Denver. We operate now in thirty two cities around the country. But the reason I mentioned Denver is because when we began in Denver, like I said, less than 30 percent of all properties had a professional media on the listing to market it. And at the time, believe it or not, the average price point in Denver wasn't that much higher than two hundred thousand dollars.

And so what we what we saw, though, is that the competitive advantage and edge that our clients were afforded by working with us quickly created a norm in the in the market. And so today, more than sixty five percent of listings in the Denver market have professional photography, where we're very grateful that we have the opportunity to work on the vast majority of those. And it really sets a bar right. To in order to create a competitive advantage and make sure that that you are able to walk into a listing appointment confidently knowing that you are going to compete really well because you're using the best you're doing the best thing you can to market that property.

Eric Stegemann: So from that perspective, and I know you said that there are lots of metrics and studies and things...