Now let’s look at the other extreme – developing the endowment area with estates in mind, much like marine drive around the UBC campus, but not quite as extravagant.  The city gets one opportunity to develop this area for future generations, so why not engineer timeless housing that compliments the status of UNBC as Canada’s green university? Build with real stone on large one or two acre lots, or more.  Use rammed earth technology, geothermal heating and wind or solar technology, or better yet, explore the option of tying into the new wood waste gasification system at the university.  UNBC and the city did not think about the potential for the area well enough before giving the green light to the current developments.  Sure, the argument could be made that nobody would buy such estate-like properties, but I disagree.  We have a new cancer clinic, a flourishing medical program, an incredible amount of industrial expansion in mining, and the potential to become a new economic focal point for the entire northwest with the development of new highrise buildings on the way.  All of these fields include unusually high paying positions in their roster, and I feel that a great deal of potential is being untapped in the one area of the city that could potentially shine as a truly great example of executive, ultra modern, and ultra efficient estates.

Don’t get me wrong, the houses that are being developed up there are quite lovely – I have been in several of them and photographed every inch.  To me they seem quite luxurious and spacious, and I know there has been a focus on making them more efficient than the average dwelling.  There is an issue with these developments that I would like to mention though; they cater neither to the starving student looking for a convenient location, nor to the corporate executive looking for a standout home.  The homes being built seem to cater to the standard issue family, and so represent nothing particularly unique in their offering, choosing the safe road of appealing to as large a demographic as possible, which in these uncertain economic times is probably a wise decision.

But for both myself and my peer group, many of whom have also spent inordinate amounts of time at UNBC, we are saddened by the lack of leadership and vision being displayed by both planners and developers.  It is somewhat of a tragedy that the area will continue to be developed with the working family in mind when it could use the land to create an example of a truly green, modern executive neighborhood that the city and the province could be proud of.  I am definitely biased with perhaps too potent a vision, but I stongly feel that UNBC is missing out on the opportunity to create an example for which it would be internationally recognized, again.  There aren’t many universities with as vast an endowment area, and they only get one chance.

Thanks for visiting,

Daniel Abraham

PG Listings.ca

Citizen Article

Any business has ups and downs, and it can be an emotional roller coaster of self doubt when you go a week without more than a phone call.  It can be equally exciting too, picking up new clients and booking a whole pile of work in a short time, and this was part of our message; remain positive as best you can, but in times of doubt, use your negative energy to really question your product/service to see if there is something constructive that can be done, and act on it (The hardest part).  This has shaped my current belief that a business cannot be viewed as a static entity; rather, it is a starting point from which an evolution takes place over time, resulting in a divergence of products and services.

Our best example is of course PG Listings.ca.  When we started we were little more than a website with pictures, with no geographic referencing, no searchable database, no back end management, and of course no blog or partners section.  Within the span of 24 months we have added all of those things, as well as started to offer videography services for virtual tours, while at the same time dropping our rentals section.  The evolution of our business has impacted our public image – clients see that we add new features, adjust existing services, and continually improve, and they appreciate it.  Dynamicism to me is one of the most important factors of competitiveness in today’s business world.

This brings me to the other main point of my brief presentation last week; the importance of flexibility and tactical planning.  Here’s a good example: Early in the new year we had laid out a medium length plan of six months or so for the continued development of the PG Listings.ca website.  Video services was near the end of that plan, but was recognized as an important product to implement.  One day in January a client informed us that a small business had begun to offer video services.  Our reaction was to immediately invest heavily in equipment, book time to practice with it and learn software techniques, and implement the service within two weeks.  All large companies react quickly to products or services offered by competitors (tablet computers?) and the response should be no different for small ones.  This highlights the importance of keeping reserve capital available, and flexibility in your long term business plan.

These were the main contributions that I made to the event, but there were dozens more tidbits offered up by the other presenters.  Michael Stanyer, also of Alchemist Studios and PG Listings.ca made a series of poignant observations about how the decision to start a business is perceived by others, as well as advice on networking and mentorship.

In summary, the chance for PG listings to offer some advice to young entrepreneurs in the city was an affirmation of our success and an acknowledgement of our valuable presence in the community.  At least, that how I’m taking it!

For starters, PG Listings has a new location at 1212 third avenue.  After working out of my home for the past couple years, the time had finally come to move somewhere more ‘official’ looking.  This actually works out great for us because we are sharing the second floor of the old Gundy’s News building with three other photographers, all sharing a large studio space.  Perhaps the best part about this arrangement is that we all specialize in different areas of photography.  We of course do mainly real estate, with the odd small scale commercial job at a restaurant or hotel.  Alex Zander specializes in large scale commercial jobs and industrial work, as well as pets.  The amazing Debbie Malm, president of the local photography club, specializes in child portraiture, and finally Shawn Daniel Mcleod is a superb fashion/modelling photographer.  So the five of us (Mike and I) and all of our gear are in this new location, working on making it an attractive artistic space for the downtown core, which leads me to perhaps the finest aspect of our recent move.  Prince George is constantly looking for ways to ‘revitalize’ the core, and to play a part in that, however small, is a great feeling.  Soon, after a few coats of paint and some of our works go up, we will be hosting an open house at our new location, which will most certainly be announced on Facebook and here on the blog.

Our new sweet digs

Second, we have started our videography service.  Some of our newer listings were our guinea pigs, with our patient clients graciously allowing us to work out the bugs in the system before making the announcement, which we still have to do actually.  It’s pretty subtle, but any show that has a video will automatically default to the video, and if the client has also chosen to hire us for imaging (I’ll talk about the new packages in a minute), there will be a separate tab for the photos, allowing the viewer to watch the show, then flip through the images at their leisure.  If you’re extra curious, click here to see a show with our new embedded video.

We are incredibly excited to be doing videos, and in the near future would like to get into shooting commercials for our clients as well, for both our partner agents page and our advertising partner page.  As our skills improve, the shows will become more complex and streamlined, and we’re all geared up to do on site shoots with agents themselves. So for pricing, we have actually dropped the price of our standard photography package to $160, and have set the standalone video service at $190.  We have left the option for a voice over as a standalone add on to either package, and have priced it at $40 as it’s a little more complicated with our new system.  Finally, we have created a ‘combo package’ and priced it at $310, which includes 10-20 images all retouched, as well as a two minute or more video.  This package took a long time to figure out because unfortunately taking the photos and creating the video are totally different processes, so we couldn’t reduce the package further, but still it’s a $40 savings over buying them both on their own.  Finally, we have kept our volume discount untouched, peeling 3% off each listing beyond the first in a one month period, and capping it at 15%. This is all on our pricing page if you need a quick reference.

Finally, PG Listings has started the process of expanding into new communities.  After putting out some tentative emails to real estate photographers (we’re a timid bunch), we have made contact with some real pro’s in the okanagan!  This project is still very much in it’s infancy, but the end goal is for PG Listings.ca to branch out to new places, employ new people, and make a positive impact in the world of real estate marketing.  I hope it’s not a spoiler, but the community we’re hoping to expand into this year starts with ‘K’ and rhymes with Gelowna. . .

So that sums up the recent activities of PG Listings.ca.  We have a whole pile of new and exciting things in the pipe for the next couple of months, but it’s nice to take a short breather here on the leap year and do a quick shoulder check at what we’ve been up to since Christmas.

All the best,

Daniel Abraham

PG Listings.ca

Here is the link to the show – for some reason I am unable to insert it directly into this post.  (Show)

There are a couple of minor issues with creating this kind of show that would ultimately impact the cost.  The first is hiring actors or models, which is not cheap.  Also, be sure to have all of your media release documentation on hand.  Second, the voice over during the show has to be scripted, recorded, edited, and synced with the cut video, also creating additional cost.  Although Prince George is slowly catching up to more modern forms of marketing, there is still a long way to go and I’m not sure that listing agents would be willing to part with the cash required to make a video such as this one.  Really though, there’s only one way to find out.

The unfortunate thing here compared to most of the U.S. market is the lousy weather and negative impact that wet snow has on a house and it’s virtual tour.  No matter what, an overcast day with slush/rain and dirt everywhere makes for a terrible video, at least outside.

Until next time

First off, why would anyone really care about that data? I sure didn’t when I was looking at buying a house, but that’s just me.  I do find it hard to believe that buyers are so adept at visualizing the difference between a 10′x14′ room and a 12′x13′ room that is weighs on their decision to view the home, but I realize that total square footage is a much more important figure than room by room square footage, except perhaps where large appliances or fixtures are concerned.  Looking at the total square footage might be of importance to families to ensure there are no styles being cramped, but again, as a first time home buyer moving in with my fiance, I couldn’t care less about that either, so although I can see where total square footage would be important in certain scenarios, I fail to see the value in it’s necessity.

So let’s look at the reporting of total and room sq/ft from the perspective of a listing agent.  The phone rings and a buyer would like to view homes with a minimum of 3 bedrooms and two baths, among several other requisite features. In a world where area is not defined and recorded, the agent will have to determine to the best of his or her ability how much total area the buyer is looking for and then proceed to show the client said properties.  This may work out fine but the odds are that some of the properties will be too small and some unnecessarily large, thereby wasting both the buyer’s and agent’s time.  The inclusion of area in all listings ensures that both buyers and agents will be better informed during the search process, ultimately leading to a more efficient and productive relationship.

However, there are some dangers involved in reporting square footage; namely, it has to be reasonably accurate. A quick search on Google regarding ‘real estate square footage lawsuit’ will yield a mountain of results and forum posts from unhappy home owners who discovered a 52 sq/ft difference between the reported area and their own measurements.  These discrepancies are the reason why you see ‘all measurements approximate, buyer to verify if important’ on most MLS listings. Home measurements aren’t an exact science – do you include the pantry? what about walk in closets? is the total calculated from the exterior measurements or combined from the interior measurement data (an approximate 20% difference)?

In summary, the issue of area and whether or not it should me mandated into the MLS is a hot topic, and for good reason. When lawsuits start flying about willy-nilly the CREA will have a close look at it’s policies and make some adjustments. If it is going to be mandated, tighter regulations will need to be placed on the agent to ensure a standard measuring technique is used; however, the bigger question is, does the responsibility to accurately measure a home even lie with an agent and should they be libel for it, or should the CREA look at other options, like an accredited third party? Or should things stay exactly as they are?

Until next time,

Daniel Abraham

PG Listings.ca

In the past, as in before October of last year, home owners who wanted their house on MLS went through a full service agent, as they were (and still are) the gatekeepers who as a group pay for the maintenance of the system and determine its content.  Any seller who wanted to post a house for sale on the MLS hired a real estate brokerage to represent them throughout the home selling transaction.  The Competition Bureau felt the CREA was forcing consumers to accept services they may not want just to get their house listed on the MLS database and on CREA’s Realtor.ca website. (MLS is individually owned by local real estate boards while CREA owns the national MLS brand.) Also, because home owners pay agent commissions, the argument was made that MLS was an inadvertent publicly funded system profiting private interests, augmenting the case for the CB.

The Competition Bureau’s solution was to allow brokerages to charge sellers a flat fee to post houses for sale on the MLS without requiring the seller to work with an agent for the rest of the transaction. Under this option, the seller is responsible for preparing their house for sale, doing market research, holding open houses and negotiating the sale price directly with buyers and their agents. You may have noticed some different looking signs going up in town from new discount brokerages.  These offer package deals where the home owner can determine what services they want from a licensed agent, effectively building their own service package.

So What Does This Mean for Buyers/Sellers of Real Estate?

A couple of things. First, it means more options.  Now you as a home owner can choose your level of service based on your budget and your own level of comfort dealing with the complex documentation etc.  If you are a lawyer who specializes in conveyances, you might just pay for access to MLS, but if legal jargon and sales unnerve you, perhaps you’d best consider hiring a full service agent to look after things.  The bottom line is that the environment has become more friendly to the consumer, although one thing worth considering is the seller’s agents.  There are some in the industry, both in Canada and abroad, who refuse to show their clients homes listed with these package deals, because often the commissions are so low that it simply isn’t worth their time (Sometimes as low as one dollar).  If you are planning on selling your home using a flat rate package, consider modifying it to entice full service agents to bring their buyers to your home.  Adding a few thousand dollar bonus to any full service agent will absolutely bring more traffic to your listing.  This way, you as a home seller still get the benefit of building your own service package, and you save significantly on the sellers half of the commission while still encouraging as many buyers to come to your door as possible. It’s a win-win!

Real Estate in the US – A Look at Things to Come

Canada has always taken cues from the American markets (except for the practice of granting subprime mortgages, ouch) and real estate marketing is certainly no different.  The United States relaxed their data protection laws a long time ago, allowing private listing sites to use the same data as MLS.  This has been a great boon for the industry, allowing for great listing sites like Trulia, Zillow, and Redfin to emerge as top listing sites in their area.  All three of these examples are light years ahead of our national MLS in terms of functionality, data availability, user-friendliness, and cool factor, which is a result of competition driving them to excel.  Canada has sites like Obeo and a few others but data protection laws limit them to basic details and images.

In the years ahead, expect major players such as Trulia and Zillow to lobby the CREA to relax their regulations and allow for market and housing data to be placed on their sites. As an example of open data, check out this listing I just pulled up from Redfin (link). As you can see, there are multiple large images, past sale prices, property taxes, appraisal data, and much much more.  Sites such as this are better for the consumer, allowing them to do their own market research and find the properties that interest them the most.  I think in this day in age, people, especially young first time home buyers, are so technically savvy that they have become accustomed to finding whatever data they are looking for rapidly and successfully, and MLS is an unfortunate throwback that for now disappoints, but will change in time.

Have a good week!

The very common Apple Iphone has a sensor that is 1/3″, represented here by the yellow box.  As you can see, the full frame rectangle is about 40 times bigger than the tiny cell phone sensor, and yet there are only 3-5 times the amount of pixels in that space.  This means that the pixels inside of the larger sensor are actually bigger, which is a good thing.  I know you may be surprised, as in the case of televisions and smart phones and tablets, more pixels in a smaller space is better – but this is not so for cameras.

It helps to look at pixels as individual buckets.  Light comes into the camera and the photons pour into all of the little buckets that make up the sensor.  When the shutter closes and the picture is done, some of the buckets will have very few photons, and some will have many.  Those with very few make up the darkest (shadows) parts of the image while the very full buckets will be the bright parts (white clouds etc).  Since the buckets on a large sensor are physically able to hold a wider range of photons, say 1-10 000 000, they have  much greater ability to represent darks and lights.  The small sensor with it’s little tiny buckets might only be able to hold 1-10 000 photons and therefore the range between very dark and very light has far fewer steps. 

This capacity is referred to as the ‘dynamic range’ of a camera, or the total range of tones a sensor can detect before reaching absolute black and absolute white.  You may notice that pictures taken with a cell phone have a classic look: bright in the window and very dark in the rest of the frame.  To illustrate this point I used my own 3.2 megapixel camera on my HTC Touch Pro to snap a couple shots off while at a shoot.  Here is a comparison of a shot taken right out of the camera with my cell phone:

Cell phone picture - yikes!

So as I have mentioned in previous posts, the dark interior and bright window are symptomatic of a picture taken with a small sensor camera. The image taken with an SLR looks much better, and is able to pick up a wider range of tones throughout the image.  Of course there are other factors in play here such as post processing, the use of a wide angle lens, and the use of lighting equipment, so this example is here simply to illustrate the point that small sensors have less dynamic range. Feel free to click on the images for a larger view.

Much more pleasant!

The other big bonus of using an SLR is the advantage of an interchangeable lens system.  My cell phone forced me to step nearly outside of the bedroom to get a decent shot, and yet even then the picture is dominated by the bed. An SLR and wide angle lens are a must when taking interior photographs.  A great wide angle lens is the Nikon 12-24 mm lens, allowing the shooter to capture a vast amount of interior space:

Nikon 12-24 mm lens

There are other issues with cellphones as well, such as the image noise (that grainy look) produced by those little wee sensors, which is also the result of having all of those pixels jammed into a small space.  Also, there are usually unpleasant color casts, and often severe blurring, because let’s face it, most of us don’t remember to give the lens a good cleaning before we start snapping photos with our cell phones.

This is not to say that SLR systems are perfect (They are very $$), but there is simply no comparison. So when you are planning on marketing a home for sale, hire someone who has the kind of equipment and expertise to do the job right, or invest in the equipment yourself and take the necessary amount of time to make that home stand out from all of the cell phone pictures floating about on MLS.

Thanks a lot,

Dan

So let’s begin our first contest of the month! Keep in mind that these shots are from the Prince George area when coming up with your prices. I am only using interior shots and exteriors that don’t include the house to keep some semblance of anonymity (Prince George isn’t that big).

So there you go, house number one. Let’s have a look at house number two.

Five pictures from each is all you get to come up with some kind of dollar figure for these two abodes.  Again, all you have to do is leave a comment with your price for each house and your email address and at the end of the month whoever is closest will win a $20 Timmy’s card.  Best of luck!

Thanks to the Photography for Real Estate blog for bringing this great example of real estate marketing to light.  There are many more high quality examples just like it at PlatinumHD.tv

As you can see, the difference between marketing a home using a group like Propvid versus marketing a home with cell phone pictures is immense. Fortunately though, these techniques have begun to make inroads into North America and elsewhere; in fact, Propvid recently opened up a division on Vancouver Island, where showcasing the property in tandem with the incredible natural beauty will work wonderfully I am sure.  Propvid is certainly not the only group to use video, but they are certainly the most professional example.  There are numerous small real estate advertisers, much like PG Listings.ca that use video to market homes, the most well known of which is most likely Fred Light and the work that he does in the New England area.  Fred uses a handheld camcorder with a stabilizer to create smooth, flowing videos that succeed in creating a positive impression and in transmitting a great deal of relevant data.

This is how I see PG listings.ca evolving as it would not require a huge amount of capital investment to acquire the gear, the skillset is already somewhat in place, and the local market is ready for it – I think.  Fred has been very successful, so much so that he has been featured on local and national television.  The world seems to recognize that this kind of presentation is the next thing to expect in the real estate marketing world. The unfortunate thing for smaller rural areas such as Prince George is that we are often the last to adapt and offer innovative services, so I wouldn’t expect to see the area adopting this kind of marketing approach any time soon.  The good news is that the agents who opt for professional level videography will have a competitive advantage that sets them well apart from their peers.  PG listings will soon be offering video services and we will have to see how the local market responds, but one thing is for sure, people love seeing their home showcased, and that will never change.

I’m feeling rather saucy tonight, so I think I’ll turn things up to eleven and choose a higher end master bedroom, something that you might walk around in wearing a silk kimono, puffing away on your ivory tusk hand carved pipe while doing morning pilates….So with the goal of evoking that kind of imagery, lets have a look.

I don’t know about my faithful readers, but this home, which is slightly under $400,000, is underwhelming to me.  That price point will get you a pretty nice place in this town, so it is alarming to see this kind of image.  In fact, I would almost go so far as to say that this image makes me want to visit the house even less than if there were no images at all – and I don’t think I’m alone in holding this opinion.  The objective of marketing a home is to influence people, to convince them that the asking price seems very reasonable based on the what they see, to make them want to be there.  We as consumers mentally conjure up expectations based on the asking price of anything.  If I asked you to visualize a car with an asking price of $250, you would likely picture an old rusted out car in your head. If I changed the price to $400,000 your mental expectation will likely be a Ferrari.  The same thing happens with houses; when we learn what an asking price is, we begin to establish an expectation of what the home will look like. If the images do not meet or exceed our expectations, we run the risk of consumers bypassing a listing, or mentally justifying a low ball offer without even having stepped into the home, neither of which are productive outcomes for the home owner or listing agent, but I digress.  Back to the image evaluation!

What we have here is a classic case of the camera trying to expose both the bright windows and the dark interior at the same time, but it’s little wee sensor can’t handle the range in brightness, so it tries to split the difference, resulting in blown out windows anyway (which can be nice in certain situations), and a dark room, which is never nice. This is the exact same problem that existed in the last post regarding the bathroom, and it’s going to happen with every camera in the world if you take the shot on auto with the flash off.

Fun Fact: Turning on the lamp will do wonders for both the overall light levels, and it will add warmth and character to a shot.  Visualize the shot above with the bedside lamp on for a moment – It seems much nicer doesn’t it?

Anyway, here’s a shot from a similar price bracket from PG Listings.ca

Booyah!  If you don’t want to don slippers and do pirouettes in this baby then you are probably missing some of your genetic code! Total difference in asking price is about $15,000 (my shot is from the more expensive home) and the difference in perceived value – priceless.  Actually, it’s not priceless, I’m sure there is a quantifiable figure that can be applied, but that can’t realistically be calculated.  To make a shot like this requires some off camera flash units as well as knowledge of photoshop – because you’ll need to do some touch up after the image is taken.  This takes time, which is one thing that an active real estate agent does not have a lot of. Actually, the more I work with agents in the city, the more I realize that these people really don’t have a lot of time and that they work very hard under very tight deadlines, making time saving solutions such as hiring a photographer/social network specialist valuable in more ways than one.

In case you were wondering if I was trying to hoodwink you by presenting the first image in a smaller format, I’m highlighting one of the weaknesses of our national MLS system – a size limit of 640×480.  PG Lisitngs has the images available full screen in high resolution, and I think this day in age consumers are justified in expecting this kind of presentation.  I’m sure that they are working to increase this but the massive amount of bandwidth required for the national system will likely keep the current standard in place for a while longer.

Well that’s it for today, I hope you are enjoying our two part series on home real estate photography, and I look forward to your comments!  Now it’s time to don that robe and slippers!

Daniel Abraham
PG Listings.ca