Here are a few examples of when you should raise your prices as a real estate photographer:

1. Increased Demand

If you find that your real estate photography services are in high demand and you consistently have a full schedule of clients, it may be an indication that your skills and images are highly valued in your local market.

This is the simplest indicator that it’s time to raise your prices. When demand exceeds your capacity to book jobs and deliver images, then you must address the issue of demand. By raising your prices, one of 2 things will happen:

One, you’ll lose a few clients, free up more of your time, and not lose any income since your remaining clients will be paying a higher price. Or, two, you won’t lose any clients and you’ll be making more money without working any additional hours.

When demand starts to become too high, raising prices is a no-brainer.

2. Increased Cost of Doing Business

If you’ve been in the industry long enough, you’ve absolutely experienced a rise in your cost of doing business. If you’re just getting started in real estate photography, this example isn’t too hard to grasp.

The easiest example here would be to think about gas prices. We drive to all of our shoots and serve a wide area, usually. That means the vehicle you drive and the price of gas can directly effect your income.

If some major world even happens (read Covid) and gas prices explode (or anything else that’s related to your cost of doing business) you’re going to take a loss if you don’t raise your prices.

3. Higher Skill Level

Another straight forward example is to think about your current skill level. If you just started your 5th year as a real estate photographer, you should not be charging the same amount that you charged for your 1st year.

Think about how much more you know, and by extension how higher of quality your images are, than when you first started. If you’re offering a better, more high quality product, you should be charging more for it.

If you’ve put in the effort to become a better real estate photographer, whether that’s through a course you took, self-teaching via YouTube, or simply just gaining more and more experience, you deserve to be compensated more. Don’t sell your talents short.

This is also true when you consider your skill level against that of your competition. If you believe that you are capturing better and higher quality images than your competition, then it stands to reason that you should be charging more than them.