PropMedia Podcast

Welcome to the PropMedia podcast. In this episode, your hosts, Matty and Moses, the co-founders of Pixlmob and Propmedia.com, are recording from the third day of PMRE in Las Vegas. They are joined by Aaron Smith, the Director of Sales for CubiCasa, a company that has revolutionized how floor plans are taken.

Aaron shares his journey from being a local real estate photographer in Michigan to becoming the Director of Sales at Cubicasa. He recounts his early days as a photographer, including joining a joint venture model called Next Door Photos and the challenges of learning to take photos.

Learn about Cubicasa:

• What it is: A mobile app that allows you to scan a home in about five minutes for the average U.S. home size and get a floor plan.
• Its impact: Cubicasa was founded in Finland, where floor plans are ubiquitous. While only 6% of U.S. listings had a floor plan when Aaron started, 34% of U.S. listings now have a Cubicasa floor plan.
• Its goal: The internal goal is "FP Pole," which stands for "Floor Plan on Every Listing".
• Its technology: The process relies on a proprietary model that runs the scan through a system, outputs the floor plan, and includes a QA feature. It was AI and machine learning before those became buzzwords.
• Photographer programs: Cubicasa has programs for photographers to help them be more successful.
• Value of floor plans: Floor plans combine images with spatial recognition, helping potential buyers determine if their belongings, like a couch or a piano, will fit.

Aaron also discusses the important role of real estate photographers in the industry, noting that between 70% and 80% of Cubicasa's scans come from real estate photographers. They are the first provider in the house outside of the realtor.

Welcome to the Prop Media podcast with your hosts Matty and Moses, the founders of Pixlmob and propmedia.com. In this episode, they are live from the PME conference in Vegas and are joined by Navjeet Chhina, one of the co-founders of Nucleus 4D.

The hosts and Navjeet discuss Nucleus 4D's cutting-edge technology, Gaussian splatting, which is poised to revolutionize the property media space. Navjeet, who has a background in land development, architectural rendering, 3D, and visualization, explains that he started Nucleus 4D with his top engineers from his previous 3D innovation studio. His previous work in creating photoreal digital twins was time-consuming and expensive, sometimes taking six to eight months and costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to build just one location, requiring cloud streaming that cost $2 per user hour.

Nucleus 4D uses an AI neural rendering technique called Gaussian splatting to take photos and images of the real world and create a photoreal 3D twin. This process reduces the cost and time of creating a photoreal digital twin by 95–97%. This technology allows users to truly walk around and explore a 3D scene in photoreal quality, like a video game. Unlike technologies like Matterport, users are not anchored to nodes or hopping between 360 bubbles/panoramic photos.

Navjeet shares how the technology accurately replicates real-life reflections, lighting, textures, and shadows. He also discusses the potential for adding 3D objects and assets into the spaces via an editor, leading to the idea of “Fortnite open houses”. The technology is significant for real estate media because it allows all deliverables (3D tours, cinematic videos, measurements, floor plans, and photos in the future) to be extracted from a single scan. This efficiency allows media companies to spend 45 minutes to an hour on-site and get all their deliverables, increasing their profitability.

The episode also covers:

• The power of virtual cameras for infinitely remixing and outputting videos and photos from one capture session.
• The "Live Guided Tour" feature, which allows realtors and up to ten clients to meet inside the virtual space via a Zoom-like meeting.
• Future features, including dynamic lighting, the ability to program the time of day, and geopositioning for the space.
• The recommended hardware for capturing Nucleus 4D tours is the $5,000 Portal Cam by XGrids, which allows a 3,000 sq ft home to be scanned in about 45 minutes.
• The business model, which charges three cents a square foot per listing per year, including the live guided tour feature, and the CMS system for managing realtor accounts.
• The legal question of whether unlicensed individuals could conduct virtual showings.
• How Nucleus 4D fits into the future of AR/VR, where the underlying data collected is valuable for augmented reality applications.
• Current turnaround time expectations, which are 48 to 72 hours for most deliverables.

Navjeet emphasizes that the technology is just at the tip of the iceberg, and advances are being driven by major companies like Google, Nvidia, and Meta, which will benefit real estate applications.

This episode of a casual conversation with the Pixlmob team features co-founders Moses Nickerson and Mattie, who live at the intersection of media and real estate. Moses is a long-time real estate industry veteran who has launched real estate teams, brokerages, and a real estate media company (Pixlmob media company). Mattie has a background primarily in film and TV, specifically producing and directing television commercials and other advertising. They discuss the business models and functions currently working in the real estate industry, focusing on the conversation between real estate agents and real estate photographers.

The co-founders explore what it takes to start a successful real estate photography business, using the goal of making $100,000 in a year. A basic framework for success is: make $100,000, net $100,000, and give $100,000. For a photography package priced at $200 (a common price across the country), achieving $100,000 in revenue requires completing 500 shoots in a year. This breaks down to around 45 shoots per month or 10 per week.

The discussion then moves to strategies for obtaining shoots. While pure volume is one approach, raising the average order value by adding services like video and drones can lead to reaching the $100,000 goal faster. The first step in sales is getting in front of enough realtors.

Key sales advice for new real estate media professionals:

• Think of yourself as a business-to-business salesperson, providing value to help a realtor grow their business.
• Focus on forging a quality business relationship rather than just selling the quality of your photography. The quality of the media is "table stakes".
• Find ways to make yourself indispensable to realtor partners. This could include offering ancillary services like sign installation or lockbox management, which busy agents highly value.
• Targeting a consistent rhythm of outreach is more likely to succeed than relying on sheer willpower.
• Higher context communication, such as in-person meetings, leads to a higher conversion rate for those with little sales experience, compared to low-context mediums like DMs.
• Track and measure your conversion ratio (e.g., how many calls/meetings it takes to get a new client) to transform your business.
• Engage with the local realtor association through sponsorships, lunch-and-learns, or teaching classes.
• Focus on building relationships for repeatable business.
• When courting teams, you must make the administrative assistant's life easier by providing convenience through services like availability and simple delivery.
• Boutique brokerages (5 to 25 agents) may be easier to partner with than large franchises, as they are often looking for differentiators and may mandate or pay for professional photography for their agents.
• Find opportunities to create a beneficial alliance with a gatekeeper (like a broker who is also a high-volume seller), which can unlock business with multiple agents.
• Be humble, ask questions about what is valuable to agents, teams, and brokers in your area, and be curious to build connections.

Finally, the discussion briefly touches on the difference between netting $100,000 while working in the business as an operator, versus netting $100,000 in passive income where the business doesn't depend on you.

Matty and Moses, the co-founders of Pixlmob and PropMedia, are at the PMRE Conference in Las Vegas to speak with Ian Kautzman, the COO for HD PhotoHub. HD PhotoHub is the dominant and longest-running player in the delivery and scheduling space for real estate photography businesses.

Kautzman explains that HDPhotoHub is "kind of like a Shopify for real estate photography businesses," but it also manages scheduling and the delivery of media files back to the agents. He shares insights gleaned from the data they have on thousands of photographers. These insights include:

• The average time from order to shoot is six days, which seems to be the "sweet spot".
• Companies that were categorized as "thriving businesses" (growing by at least 44% year-over-year) included floor plans on 58% of their orders.
• Growing businesses were delivering video on a little under 25% of all orders.
• 98% of the high-growth businesses were using real-time scheduling.

The group also discusses how the market has changed since 2019, the importance of bundling and packages, and advice for designing a new real estate photography business, including must-have services and the critical step of hiring sooner. Kautzman emphasizes the importance of providing agents with more value from their media, such as through marketing kits and high-design brochures.

Camilo Lopez, founder of the renowned LPG Media Group and current CEO of Infinite Creator, joins the hosts of the PropMedia podcast to discuss his journey into the real estate industry. Camilo shares how he co-founded a video production company, LPG Media Group, after observing the low quality of photography for multi-million dollar homes in Miami. LPG focused on creating the highest quality real estate videos, initially serving the luxury market with homes over $20 million in Miami before expanding to major markets like New York, the Hamptons, San Francisco, and Austin.

The conversation delves into the evolution of the industry, with Camilo emphasizing that photos provide information, while video is essential for storytelling and evoking emotion. He discusses the "white glove" service mindset that drove LPG's success, prioritizing hospitality over creative work first, even hiring people with Four Seasons bellboy or hospitality experience who were interested in content.

Camilo recounts the challenging transition from LPG to Infinite Creator, stressing the importance of focus, which for Infinite Creator is singularly on evolving the industry. He shares how they bring the DNA of high quality from LPG to make that standard accessible to the masses. A key element of Infinite Creator’s approach is the technical use of AI photo analysis to guide video generation, ensuring purposeful camera movement that captures the story.

He offers business wisdom, stating that "top line is vanity, bottom line is sanity, money in the bank is reality". Camilo advocates for greater focus on sales and business training within the media industry, and leveraging artificial intelligence to increase efficiency and lower costs.

Looking ahead, Camilo anticipates the next evolution of the industry will be extreme vertical integration, starting at the media layer. He champions the photographer as the backbone of the industry, asserting that they are undervalued. He advocates for a future where a unified ownership standard, possibly utilizing blockchain disclosure, rewards photographers for their intellectual property beyond the initial transaction. The industry needs to shift its focus from creation to distribution and syndication and get closer to the transaction.

Find out more about Camilo Lopez and his work at infinitecreator.com

PropMedia Podcast: Episode 16

Matty and Moses from Pixlmob and PropMedia.com are joined at PMRE by Todd Kivimaki, co-founder of WOW Video Tours and Spiro Media.

Todd shares the story of how he started his real estate media business 22 years ago, when he was in his second year of college. Being creative and owning a camera, he looked for ways to make money. When his parents were selling their house in 2004, Todd noticed that listings only had about six photos on the internet, which was still dial-up. He decided to put video on the internet for real estate listings, a novelty at the time.

The conversation continues with Todd detailing the growth of WOW Video Tours, including his initial idea for a brokerage subscription model in Lima, Ohio. This early model involved agents paying a flat monthly fee for Todd to shoot all their listings.

Todd explains how the current brokerage deal structure is a "top-down selling" approach, focusing on the broker-in-charge. This strategy focuses on "speaking broker," emphasizing the benefits of professional media for increasing market share, recruiting agents, and simplifying media buying. Todd also addresses the challenge of scaling a large business, managing high volume, and delegating tasks to avoid the "owner trap".

Later in the episode, the hosts speak with Josh Mais, who started as a real estate photo editor before launching his real estate photography business in Kansas City in 2012. Josh discusses the evolution of the real estate media industry from focusing on the "craft of photography" to the "craft of business," largely driven by the growth of teams and automation tools. Josh is also the founder of Show&Tour, a platform built to efficiently deliver media and handle volume.

Josh and the hosts discuss the impact of AI on the industry, noting that while AI is great for consistency and scale, there will always be a need for the "human touch" and personal service.

Key Topics Covered:

• Building a Real Estate Media Business
• WOW Video Tours and the Brokerage Subscription Model
• The Strategy of "Speaking Broker" for Brokerage Deals
• Avoiding the "Owner Trap"
• Scaling a Media Company and Managing Volume
• The Founding of Show and Tour
• The Evolution of Real Estate Media Industry
• The Role of AI in Photography and Business
• Diversifying Commercial Real Estate Services

Guest Information:

• Todd Kivimaki: Co-founder of WOW Video Tours and Spiro Media (spiro.media)
• Josh Mais: Founder of Show and Tour (showandtour.com) and works with Autoenhance.AI

This podcast episode of the Prop Media podcast features an interview with Agent Casey G.. Casey G. is the owner of Agent4M and City 360 Tours in Arizona. His companies complete about 15 to 20 shoots a day. The episode provides insights into how this entrepreneur is scaling his business in Arizona. Casey G. also shares his interesting ideas, including using 3D tours.

Casey G. obtained his real estate license in 2014. His initial reason for getting the license was to use the commission to make a down payment on a house. He found getting the license easy, but making money afterward was difficult. Casey G. found real estate too stressful and became too emotionally attached to his clients. He found less stress in photography. Casey G. is still a licensed realtor, but he stopped doing real estate business completely about two years prior to the interview.

Casey G. transitioned to photography about three years after getting his license. He was dissatisfied with the quality of the real estate photography and media companies he was using as an agent. For example, a photographer took a picture of a luxury home's pool house bathroom with two giant floaties left in the shot. This was the last straw for Casey G., who decided he could do better. He admits that it was a lot harder than he initially thought, and the white balance in photo editing almost made him quit.

Casey G. grew his media business through YouTube and word of mouth. His current team consists of three full-time, hourly photographers and freelancers who are paid per job for extra work in their areas. His youngest daughter recently joined the business as the chief marketing officer, focusing on social media and other administrative tasks. Casey G. currently uses Spiro for all booking and photo delivery.

Customer service is the number one priority of Casey G.'s company. He advises that photographers should promote the realtor to the homeowner, act like they are best friends with the realtor if they are present, and promote the service. Casey G. is a contributor to YouTube. His YouTube content teaches people about real estate photography, social media, and how to create income through various social media platforms. His channel teaches someone how to start their own company with just a Canon M50.

Casey G.'s side hustle, City 360 Tours, is a newer venture. The idea is to provide a virtual tour of the city for city tourism boards or similar entities, where a drone view of the city links to virtual tours of individual businesses. Businesses pay to have the virtual tour created and then a monthly service fee to keep it updated with menus and videos. This business was started because of the difficulties with editing Matterport tours, particularly when people show up in the middle of a scan. Casey G. still uses Matterport in some cases, such as an empty restaurant where editing isn't a concern.

Regarding his YouTube channel and social media, Casey G. notes that many photographers fail because they are not posting enough of their content, whether it is photos or videos. He suggests posting at least three times a week, but his company posts daily, sometimes a couple of times a day, to platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Personal posts and behind-the-scenes content do particularly well.

Casey G. believes that to succeed in the future of real estate media, photographers need to continually "take away their headaches" by offering services like floor plans and post-installation/sign-hanging, even if the agent technically could do it themselves for free.

This episode of the PropMedia podcast features an interview with guest Renee Nickerson. She is introduced by the speaker as "an Airbnb managing empress who runs 110 properties or so in Greenville in the upstate of South Carolina"

The discussion focuses on property media and how to expand your work beyond shooting for realtors to include photos for short-term rentals (STRs) like Airbnb.

Renee, who launched her management company in 2019, discusses her journey in scaling her short-term and long-term rental business. She defines STR as a short-term rental, like a traditional Airbnb booked for a couple of nights up to a couple of weeks. She also explains:

• MTR (Midterm Rental): A furnished monthly stay, usually 30 nights minimum up to six months.
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• LTR (Long-term Rental): A traditional one-year, unfurnished lease, like an apartment.
  
  

The company specializes in managing STRs, MTRs (including a large portfolio of corporate rentals), and LTRs.

Key topics include:

• The Difference in Photography: Airbnb photography is "very very different" from MLS photos for realtors. Realtor photography focuses on showing the space as a "blank canvas" with wide angles to promote imagination, while Airbnb photos need to showcase attention to detail and help potential guests "get the vibe". Airbnb guests are only looking at the pictures to book, as they generally "don't read our description".
  
  
• Essential Short-Term Rental Shots: Photos should highlight amenities. Examples of important shots include:
  • Televisions in bedrooms (which might be avoided in real estate photography).
  • Opening cabinets and pulling out drawers in the kitchen to show that it is well-stocked with essentials like plates, pots, and glasses.
  • Detail shots of the beds and linens.
  • Outdoor and office spaces.
  • Recreational equipment like kayaks and paddle boards if the property is on a lake.
• Number of Photos: Renee uses between 30 to 50 photos, with 50 for a large four-bedroom house, and usually 20 to 30 for smaller two and three-bedroom homes.
• Avoiding Certain Photos: It's suggested to avoid taking photos of complimentary amenities like snack bowls and peppermint patties on the bed so that they remain a "surprise bonus" for guests.
• Advice for Photographers: Renee suggests short-term rental (STR) shoots should cost more than basic real estate photography due to the additional work and greater level of detail needed. A photographer should offer tiered packages based on amenities and the size of the property. Photographers looking to work with STR managers should provide examples of their work, confirm a fast turnaround time (photos needed quickly, able to book within a week at maximum), and be open to communication about different shots. The speaker recommends highlighting a specialist offering in "Airbnb photography" on a website to differentiate from standard real estate photography.

In this episode of the Prop Media podcast, hosts Moses Nickerson and Matty Fisher talk with Vanessa Martin, co-founder of the safety app Tether RE. Vanessa, an Army combat veteran and former professional bodybuilder, discusses the inspiration behind Tether RE, an app she developed with her partner, Scott Martin, to enhance safety for real estate professionals when they are on location at listings.

Vanessa outlines the four key features of Tether RE designed to protect agents and photographers: 24-hour safety monitoring, pre-screening for buyer verification, an SOS panic feature, a proximity safety timer, and an impact struggle alert. The conversation also covers the importance of safety protocols in the real estate world, the surprising statistics on crime in the industry, and how Tether RE offers a modern, automatic solution to replace outdated, ineffective safety measures.

Whether you're a real estate photographer, agent, or simply interested in personal protection, this conversation offers valuable insights into staying safe in a surprisingly dangerous profession.

Find out more at TetherRE.com.

Matty and Moses, the founders of Pixlmob, dive into the crucial topic of seasonality in the property media business on this episode of the PropMedia podcast. Drawing on their experience scaling both their property media company, North 7th, and the editing solutions company, Pixlmob, they offer practical advice for navigating the slow season.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Understanding Seasonality: What causes the dips in property media business, especially around the winter holidays and August? (Hint: It's not just the weather, as their Australian colleagues confirmed!)
• Budgeting for the Lows: How to plan your finances to avoid getting caught by the sudden drop in revenue, and strategies for managing fixed expenses when business slows down. Learn how to calculate your "normal" month and budget from your lowest month.
• The Power of Systems: Why building a business that can flex is essential for surviving the seasonal swings, and how outsourcing (like with Pixlmob) can provide the necessary flexibility without the commitment of hiring full-time staff.
• Maximizing Downtime: What to do when time becomes your main currency. Use the slow season to refine your systems, engage with top clients (like through thoughtful gifts), audit your product menu, adjust pricing, and even improve your photography skills by learning to edit.

Tune in for actionable strategies to keep your property media business growing and healthy, even in the "slow season."

Don't forget to subscribe to the Prop Media podcast! You can find them on YouTube and all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify.