Lowering the Cost of Virtual Tours

In today's economy, many realtors wonder how to lower their costs while remaining in business. After all, they need to put alot of money out front to market a listing which may or may not sell, or the seller may choose to cancel the contract. There's the cost of staging the property, flyers/brochures, postage, photography, posting to sites such as Realtor.com, signs, etc. etc.

Jack, a realtor I work closely with has come up with a solution to lower the cost of photography/virtual tours for his listings. He has decided to share my price sheet with the seller and ask them which package they feel would best showcase their property. The Seller chooses the package and products which s/he believes is appropriate. Jack then contacts me to schedule the photography, and the Seller pays me directly. Any savings that Jack is eligible for such as discounted tours, is passed through to the Seller (making Jack look even better!). I provide both the Seller and Jack with a copy of the invoice for their records.

This benefits the realtor in several ways:

1) The Seller is more invested in making sure the property looks its best.
2) The Realtor does not need to put all his/her money up front and hope that the property sells.
3) When the property sells, the cost of the photography is deducted from the Realtor's commision to reimburse the Seller, so the Seller may remain more committed to continuing to work with the Realtor in order to recoup his money.
4) By putting more of the responsibility on the Seller to assume marketing costs up front, with reimbursement at settlement, there is less likelihood that the Realtor will be blamed if the property fails to sell.
5) If the Seller decides at some point to withdraw the property, the Realtor has minimized his cost of doing business.

In today's difficult market, we all need to follow Jack's example and think "outside the box" to identify creative ways of continuing to do business while lowering our risk.