What camera or camcorder should I buy for my Real Estate Videos?

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This is the question I get asked more than any other when I teach my “Why Video For Real Estate” Class.  And here’s the answer:  “The one that best fits your budget, and your needs”

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A cop out?  Nope – it’s the truth.  You can’t have someone tell you what camera to buy – that’s a cop out!  A cop out from doing the due diligence necessary to make an informed decision.
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But I keep getting asked the question, so here are some things to consider as you select a new camcorder:
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I don’t make specific recommendations, because different things are important to different people.  There are many things to consider when buying a camcorder:  Tape vs hard drive vs memory stick, HD vs SD, battery life, zoom ratio, CCD vs CMOS sensor, audio capabilities.  Lots of choices that really rely on personal preference.
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My consumer camera records to HDV tape (it’s a Canon HV40) because this is the exact same medium is my larger pro camera (also a Canon).  When I take both cameras on a shoot, I can use the same tapes, they are both HDV, and post production is easier.
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Here’s what I will say – figure out what is important to you as far as recording medium (i.e. hard drive, memory stick, or good ole fashion tape), HD vs SD, battery life, zoom ratio, type of sensor, and the like.  Then go out and buy a Canon, Sony, or a Panasonic.  My opinion is that you can’t go wrong with any of these 3 manufacturers. I use all Canon equipment because I think the lens is the most important thing, and no one knows lenses like Canon (again – opinion).
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Here’s an important tip most people overlook – If you decide to go HD, you need to remember that HD processing requires a very beefy computer.  You might spend $500 on an HD camera and later realize you need a $2000 plus computer to process that HD footage.
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Remember that you can still buy an HD camera and down convert to SD for processing.  Honestly, I’m not sure if all HD camcorders do this – one more question to ask once you narrow your search down to your final 3-5.
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Most important accessories for shooting real estate listings – get a wide angle lens adaptor, and a tripod.  After you get good at shooting video and are ready for the next level, consider a camera stabilizer, but be aware that the cost and learning curve for stabilizers is very steep.
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Other things to consider – If you insist on doing your audio on location, make sure the camera you select has a mic jack for an exterior microphone.  Internal camcorder mics suck and if you want your final production to sound good, you should not use the existing internal camera mic.  My solution for this is to do all your audio in post production but I preach about that in this blog post

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So I didn’t give you the exact answer – but take 1 hour researching and I bet you will make a much better choice.  Here’s a head start – my favorite site for reviewing electronics is cnet.com.  Go check out http://reviews.cnet.com/camcorders/ It will be time well spent.

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Good luck!

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—– ©2010 – AmazingVideoTours.com – All Rights Reserved. Amazing Video Tours is Charlotte’s Premier Real Estate Video Provider for Realtors, and other individuals with property to sell, lease, or rent. A departure from the old fashion 360 Virtual Tour, Amazing Video Tours takes online property marketing to the next level.

Want to be successful in 2010?  80% of your business will most likely be referral based, so work that database.  Follow up with old clients to just say hello and remind them you are still in the business.  Do “Pop By’s” with an item of value (ala Brian Buffini).  Host informative events and become known as the “Area Expert”.  But what about that other 20%, or what if you have not been in the business long and your referral base is somewhat lacking? 

In that case you better go where the consumers are.  According to NAR, over 86% of all buyers start their search on the Internet.  Compile that with the fact that with more and more inventory on the market, sellers want to see exactly how an agent will market their home online. 

If you really want to excel as an agent online, then check out the following blog posts as your boot camp for online success.  Get in front of the curve NOW by adopting things such as full motion video, and Social Media as part of your marketing repertoire. 

It’s a new decade, and new media world where Generation X and Y will dominate your transactions.  Particularly Gen Y (as they will eventually out number baby boomers).  They grew up on the internet and would rather Text and Tweet then email and talk on the phone.  How do you embrace these Generations?  Read the following blog posts and you will be ready for the future NOW!

How To Do Your First Video of A Listing  – Get ready for video.  It’s already here, and your clients will be asking for it.  Don’t get caught off guard, or left behind.  A step by step turorial.

Twitter Made Easy for Business – A Video Series – The only video tutorial you’ll ever need to master using Twitter the RIGHT WAY!

The Secret to Managing Social Media – Quit whining and start Tweeting!

Twitter is Stupid, I don’t have time for Twitter  - It’s a pervasive attitude in the Real Estate Community – Here’s why it shouldn’t be.

The Importance of Good Real Estate Photography  - This is more of a demo then a “how to”, but the how to is just an email away.  Let me know how I can help you take better RE photos.

Goldilocks and The 3 Realtors – A Real Estate Photo (not so) Fairy Tale.  Same thought as the one above, please email me if I be of assistance to helping you take better RE photos.

1 Secret to Getting Photos Like A Pro Photographer – For your non Real Estate Photos

What’s So Social About Linkedin? Going Beyond just linking with people

Protect Those Expensive Lenses – A little investment goes a long way

What NOT to do with Embedded YouTube Videos on Your Blog

Advertising your Listings in Today’s Economy – The cheese has moved, have you?

Hope you find something of value in the list above.  Here’s another little nugget of Real Estate Tech that will MOST DEFINITELY help you get off to a great new year.  Get familiar with the term “Real Estate Bar Camp”.  Go to one, they are happening more and more in every major city in the country.  They are free, run by the participants, and better then most paid events.  More info at http://rebarcamp.com/

Happy New Year and all the best for your Real Estate Tech Success in 2010.

————- ©2010 – AmazingVideoTours.com – All Rights Reserved. Amazing Video Tours is Charlotte’s Premier Real Estate Home Video Provider for Realtors, and other individuals with property to sell, lease, or rent. A departure from the old fashion 360 Virtual Tour, Amazing Video Tours takes online property marketing to the next level.

Ok – I’m at it again. Doing research, talking to the public, and compiling the data for you! After speaking with many real estate agents about technology and online marketing (particularly their listings), I realize that there are a lot of misconceptions out there.

Remember the days of 2005 when all you had to do was throw a sign in the front yard and you had 5 competing offers? You didn’t even get a chance to take the photos and you got above asking price offers.

Welcome to the hangover! Those days are gone! But let’s not beat that dead horse. From my meetings with these agents, I have noticed that many of them have not changed their online marketing tactics at all.

I asked one agent who had a $900,000 listing with 2 lousy pictures (and no virtual tour) why he didn’t take advantage of Realtor.com’s full 25 photos. He said that he just wanted to put out enough info to tease the buyer and get them to call him to show the listing. I understand the fundamental concept of that approach. I also get what today’s consumers are looking for.

Here’s the hard facts. Times have changed and credit is tighter, inventories have skyrocketed, and Days on Market have elongated tremendously since 2005.

I took a survey of 50 potential home buyers in today’s market. Almost all, (47 of them) look for homes online. Most of them go to Realtor.com. The overarching sentiment is that, “There are so many homes to choose from now that if the agents pictures are few, bad, or missing completely – they are NOT thirsty to SEE MORE!” They DON’T take the time to call the listing agent and get more details. They simply go right on to the next listing. Period – end of story.

What makes this even more compelling is that the home sellers get aggravated when they go online and see how their homes are being marketed with lousy photos and no tours.

So, if you are a listing agent, the public is speaking and perhaps you should take notice. Price and condition IS #1 – no doubt. But the way you are presenting your homes online these days are what is going to generate showings, offers, contracts, and closings!

So please – get out there and take some great photos of your listings, and even better – make yourself stand out by doing a full motion video. And if you just don’t have the technical stomach or the patience for it all, hire a professional photography and full motion video virtual tour company to do it for you.

This blog post was inspired by one I read recently where the Realtor was frustrated with real estate video because he could not get – and I quote, “professional results” with his Flip Video Camera. He said the video was limiting, the audio was bad, the software was clumsy, and extremely difficult to edit. Well, …… yes.

As a professional full motion video producer, hearing someone wanting to get professional results from a Flip Video camera is frustrating. You get what you pay for. It’s like the difference between a flat fee agent and a full service agent. Full service agents do more, work harder, put in more time, and charge more money.

The Flip was designed for fun spontaneous video capture with not much in the way of audio. Is the Flip a great camera? Absolutely! But it has its time and place. For on the go cute shots of the kids doing something spontaneous, yeah – record away – and email it to Grandma. But if you are trying to market the single most expensive thing someone owns – probably not.

So here’s the truth. You can’t use the words “professional real estate video” and “Flip Video Camera” in the same sentence. Period.

I will probably take a lot of heat for not sharing enthusiasm about the Flip for real estate, as I know there are many Flip Video fans on real estate forums. But I have also read post after post with agents bad mouthing video because it is “often done so poorly and unprofessionally.” Well, if the ones producing this junk are not willing to spend more then a couple hundred bucks for real equipment —– no kidding!

So, should you try to shoot your own video? Yes, absolutely. I go into a ton of detail on how in this blog post. But do yourself a favor and arm yourself with decent equipment, hire a professional full motion video producer, or just say no. Remember, a bad video will do you and your seller more harm then good.

Meade Wilson and Amazing Video Tours are proud to bring you this fantastic home for sale in Lake Wylie SC.

Stunning Saussy Burbank home with 5 Beds & 3.5 Baths on a large corner lot in a gorgeous heavily treed setting. Just seconds from beautiful Lake Wylie and located in the sought after Clover School District — all with lower York County taxes.

Features: Very open floorplan. Large Master suite with sitting area, walk in closet, and large master bath with oversized dual shower and separate whirlpool tub. Large family room with gas fireplace and lots of windows flows into well planned kitchen with massive granite countertops, stainless steel appliances with gas cook top and dual gas/convection ovens. Cherry cabinets and center island. All appliances remain.

I recently worked on a presentation on “Why Video” for a local Real Estate Agency so I took the time (several hours) to look at a random sampling of 1000 listings for sale in the Charlotte, NC area. Here is a summary of my findings:

• Of 500 Listings (250K-500K) – 2 had *real* full motion video
• Of 500 Listings (500K-1M) – 4 had *real* full motion video (2 of them were my clients)

I emphasize the word “real” because there are many people who like to use the word “video” when all they are offering is a static photo slide show set to music. There were a few more of these offerings as follows:

• Of 500 Listings (250-500K) – 7 had slide shows (amongst 4 agents)
• Of 500 Listings (500-1M) – 13 had slide shows (amongst 5 agents)

It just goes to show how untapped this method of marketing homes is. I am convinced that as more agents use (and get better at) full motion video, and as sellers start to ask for it – full motion video will become the norm.

I conducted this research another time back in January, 2008 but didn’t have the foresight to write down the statistics. As I recall back then, I only found 1 full motion video in all the listings I checked (which was several hundred, but not quite 1000).

Bottom line: Full Motion Video —- It’s coming — be ready for it, or find a vendor who already is.
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Amazing Video Tours offers photography and full motion video marketing solutions to Realtors, and other individuals with property to sell, lease, or rent. A departure from the old fashion 360 Virtual Tour, Amazing Video Tours takes online property marketing to the next level.

Recently, I spent a few hours researching Charlotte Area Listings to get a gauge on how many Real Estate Agents are making use of full motion video (specific findings in a post to follow). The quick answer is, not many.

What I did find surprised me! Over 3/4 of the agents that ARE taking advantage of their own produced Video Tours and slide shows are using copyrighted music from famous artists as a backdrop for their work.

AGENTS — DO NOT do this! Even though you think that “Carolina on my mind” by James Taylor makes for a perfect backdrop to a Carolina home — resist the urge to use this [copyrighted] music. I’m sure the agents doing it don’t have a clue they are doing anything wrong but they could be getting a call from a record label attorney.

The solution for this is to do a Google Search for “Royalty Free Music” and go to one of the sites to get your music. Now, I will warn you – this is a time consuming process. If you are diligent, you will have to cull through hours (if not days) of music to find just the right songs you like to set as the backdrop to your tours. Then – you have to pay (yes – PAY) for the music. And it’s not cheap. One song can cost you 30-50 bucks. BUT — Once you buy the music, you are free to use it (even for commercial purposes) and you won’t have an angry record label attorney on your phone.

At Amazing Video Tours we only use royalty free music for our Realtor and seller clients. We have spent weeks on these royalty free sites picking out just the right music for each home we do a video on. We don’t want to get sued – and we certainly don’t want our clients getting sued. You shouldn’t either! Good luck making those videos. If you get frustrated — call us!

Amazing Video Tours and Sandee Wilkerson of First Properties of the Carolinas (704-608-6553/800-545-3342) are proud to bring you this fabulous waterfront home in River Hills on Lake Wylie.

According to the National Association of Realtors, “Over 86% of home buyers start their home search on the internet.” Amazing Video Tours is proud to fill a niche in the ever changing Web 2.0 world for a new means of selling Real Estate.

According to Wikipedia, “Web 2.0 describes the changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aim to enhance creativity that have led to blogs, social networking sites, and VIDEO SHARING SITES”.

If you’ve been on the web at all lately, you know that video is taking over the Internet. As our ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) get faster and bandwidth gets served up quicker than ever, video will dominate the Internet. If you have any doubts, check out YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, Meta Cafe, My Space, Wellcomemat, or Zipvo. This list just scratches the surface of free video hosting sites around the globe.

But back to Real Estate. The market has changed. You might say, “duh”, but the way properties are being marketed on the Internet has not changed at all. For 99% of homes for sale, its still just photos and distorted spinning top 360 virtual tours. Those 360 virtual tours used to set a listing apart, but now everyone uses them, and technology has dated them. Plus there’s more inventory on the market and homes are sitting longer. Home sellers and their agents are going to need to change the way they market their homes to stand out in a growing pack, and to tap into Web 2.0

Currently, less then 1% of homes are marketed via full motion video, and WE understand why. Shooting full motion video is HARD! If you’ve ever tried to make a video, you know how aggravating it can be. Difficult lighting situations, a shaky camera, and needless zooming all can make for unsettled viewers.

Marketing a property utilizing video is equally challenging. Light (or lack of it) is the camera operators worst enemy and if you don’t get it under control, you end up producing a video that does more harm then good in marketing the home. At Amazing Video Tours, we’ve mastered the art of using video to market homes. In addition, our web team can get your full motion video home tour marketed on over 10 video sites, blogs, and by use of other Web 2.0 technology.

And for the Agents, what a way to differentiate yourself from the pack! When potential home seller’s see that you are willing to market their home in a way that the other 99% of agents have not embraced yet, you’ll get more listings, and sell your listings faster. Remember, excitement about your listings leads to more listings which leads to more sign calls, and it mushrooms from there. And that’s just the beginning. When we post your full motion video tours to the video sites, we use the “tags” to market you, the agent! If you know anything about SEO, you know that references to your website will help you in the chase to page 1 of the search engines. Your old fashion 360 Virtual Can’t do that!

In conclusion, video represents the next evolution of internet home sales. Spinning top 360 virtual tours are nice, but they distort the rooms, and dont give you a true indication of the flow (of a home) from one room to another. We invite you to visit our website at AmazingVideoTours.com and dig a little deeper (samples etc) to see how a full motion video tour of your home can really differentiate you in this tough marketplace.