CoStar Group has 421 Real Estate Photographers on Staff20519
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 WGAN ForumFounder & WGAN-TV Podcast Host Atlanta, Georgia |
DanSmigrod private msg quote post Address this user | |
  Screen Grab fro CoStar Investor Day 2024 Event. CoStar Group has 421 Real Estate Photographers on Staff Hi All, CoStar Group has 421 real state photographers on staff, according to a CoStar executive during the CoStar Day 2024 in-person/virtual event today (Thursday, 5 December 2024). Above is a screen grab from the presentation showing all the gear that each Costar photographer receive. Costar has announced plans to acquire Matterport, pending regulatory approval. CoStar has been a Matterport client for 10+ years and has previously announced all its real estate agent listings on Homes.com include a Matterport tour. CoStar also uses Matterport for other CoStar divisions, including Apartments.com, TEN-X. CoStar has previously announced plans to hire thousands of photographers to shoot Matterport and photos. More about CoStar planned acquisition of Matterport tagged: CoStar Your thoughts? Happy holidays, Dan |
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viewmyspace private msg quote post Address this user | |
| They also just laid off about 50 of these photographers nationwide last week. Not sure where the algorithm sits so far... | ||
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ron0987 private msg quote post Address this user | |
@viewmyspace I guess that was one in the picture that just got his notice  |
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 WGAN BasicMember Denver |
pixelray private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Can't help but wonder if they are going to get rid of long time matterport subcontractors in favor of their own people already. This could be disastrous for many of us if that happens. | ||
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 WGANStandard Member Los Angeles |
Home3D private msg quote post Address this user | |
| What is useful to know is how this works within Homes.com. All agents are invited, at no charge, to register themselves in Homes.com's agent directory. The agent simply provides a bit of info about themselves. Homes.com automatically pulls from MLSs the number of closed transactions the agent has had in the past 5 years and shows them on a map in the agent's directory display. All good. This is intended to make Homes.com a useful go-to source for sellers to find an agent that is active in your neighborhood, if that is important to them. Homes.com invites all agents to become PAYING customers of Homes.com. If an agent signs up, they pay a monthly fee and Homes.com automatically promotes the agent's transactions via online advertising. Interestingly, the price an agent pays monthly is relative to the number of transactions they have closed in the past 5 years. So a new agent starting out pays a much lower monthly fee for Homes.com promotion than a busy, established agent. Personally, I think this is very progressive of Homes.com. All "Paying" agent members, each time they sign a listing, gets a "free" Matterport tour for the listing (I presume photos too) as part of the deal for paying the monthly fee. This also makes sense in their tiered fee system as a busy agent has most listings so they'll be getting more "free" services from Homes.com. What is key here is that Homes.com knows the NAR research shows that buyers wish every home had a virtual tour. So they're doing what they can, leveraging Matterport to benefit Homes.com. They want more listings on Homes.com to show virtual tours than the other aggregators, Zillow, Realtor, Redfin. KEY here is that these Matterport models created "for free" for their paying agents - WILL ONLY APPEAR ON HOMES.COM. These Matterport models will NOT be seen on Zillow, Realtor, Redfin or any other platform. I don't even thing they will appear on the corporate broker site or MLS itself for these "paying" agents. These virtual tours ONLY appear on Homes.com. CoStar / Homes.com wants to make Homes.com THE go-to aggregation site for buyers (and renters via Apartments.com) So, what effect will this have on us? Among my agent customers, no effect at all. I don't believe any of them have signed to pay Homes.com a monthly fee for these benefits. I have pretty high-end agent customers and I know they won't trust an unknown "Uber" photographer to service their listings. Also, when I do Matterport it's virtually always a "full property" virtual tour, front yard, sides, back, pool, gazebo, guest house, everything. I'm sure that's not what Homes.com staff photographers/scanners do. Really good agents know that quality photography is critical to their reputation and they won't be satisfied trusting that decision to an algorithm. I do think that this plan by Homes.com will, slowly, increase the visibility of virtual tours, inching us toward the day when virtual tours are expected on every listing, not just a cool extra to have. But think about it. If you're selling your home, how much will your choice of an agent be influenced by one who says "list with me, I'll provide a Matterport 3D tour" if the seller is savvy enough to understand that this cool marketing will ONLY be seen on Homes.com? Sorry for the long post, but this is important for all of us to understand. BTW, this was all explained to me by an actual sales person for Homes.com who I caught in a friendly talkative mood one afternoon. Personally, I think what Homes.com is doing with Matterport is GOOD for all of us, as long as you are a photographer that always goes the extra mile to deliver top-quality media for your clients. If your work is no better than Homes.com's "Uber" photographers, you could suffer. If you approach every shot as an artist, you'll be fine. It's one thing to use Uber to get you from here to there. It's quite a different matter to trust the principal marketing of a million-dollar home to Uber. It doesn't make you look very good as an agent. |
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WGAN Forum Founder & WGAN-TV Podcast Host Atlanta, Georgia |
DanSmigrod private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @Home3D Much thanks for this insight. I started a new WGAN Forum topic: => Matterport + Homes.com from a Real Estate Photographer's Perspective Happy holidays, Dan |
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 WGAN FanClub Member Queensland, Australia |
Wingman private msg quote post Address this user | |
| I'd wish I had saved an example why you should hire a person who has a great experience and a portfolio that proves it. I once called to do a 3D tour which in fact was an attempt by an agent to re-do the tour because their regular photographer who just bought a Pro2 did a very bad job for them. They at least found a way to hide a dollhouse which I know how to access anyway. They literally went one pass through $3M property and they were done. It looked awful and barely covered the whole property(main house and a granny flat) and covered nothing from outdoor features. Here is what I have done for them. It was originally supposed to be listed with a price over $2.5M. With my tour they listed it for over $3M and it was sold from about $3.5M. Sure since it was 2021 and real estate started to climb everywhere so 1 month delay with a listing could add 500K naturally but another 500K they gained I am sure came from ability for interstate buyers to see it and walk it online. BTW, it has been done with a Pro2 only. |
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