The Malibu Real Estate Blog

The Wall Street Journal published an interesting article that everyone in Malibu needs to really understand. I’m not going to name anyone but there are numerous  Malibu real estate agents who try to save a few bucks and shoot their own listings with low budget point and shoot cameras or even worse…. their cell phones… and I’m seeing this done on $10,000,000 beach homes! Here’s my advice. Before giving the listing to them ask them who is going to shoot the listing? If they say themselves, ask to see a sample of work for a home that’s the same price as yours. If it’s great stick with them!  Let me take a second here to disclose something too…..I’m not only an agent but a professional photographer too and I find that it’s an indespensible skill with marketing homes. A favorite quote from the article, ” Let’s not mince words: If you are not using professional photography to market your home, you are not really marketing your home”.

When I started to get high-end listings I wanted to make sure I got the best shots, so I learned the trade and can now produce images like these below.

So yeah, I know a bit about this subject and on listing presentations I make it a point to talk about the role that great photography plays in getting Malibu home owners  top dollar for their home.

Here are the facts about high end homes shot with DSLR’s vs. point and shoots. (likely Pro’s VS. Agents)
-Receive an avg. of 61% more views across all price tiers!
-Have a 47% higher asking price and an increased likelyhood of selling
-Homes above $1m sold on avg. for $116k or more!

Ok the Bad news!
- Redfin found that more than half of $1m-plus listings were shot with low-end cameras!

In Malibu a majority of the homes value can be in the ocean view. This isn’s such a hard thing to capture…..if you don’t mind it framed within a dark room.  To have a well lit interior balanced with the blue ocean and blue sky in the windows..that takes skill and time!  So take this advice…don’t let your million dollar view be shot with a $99 camera! You’ll be losing a ton of money!

The green bar represents SLR photography; the red is point and shoot.

Graph from Redfin.com

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For seriously straight talk about actually buying or selling a home in Malibu, call me on my cell at 310 699 8428 anytime 7am to 10pm.

Early in the week you could tell something different was in the air. It was hot and humid, and the cool northwesterlies were absent from the shores of Zuma. By Wednesday there were rumors of rain but the skies above Malibu were free from the tell tale cumulus nimbus clouds. Late Wednesday some unusual clouds started coming up from the south. I ran down to the beach and shot a few sunset pics. Still no rain. Around 11 pm I started to hear some thunder and a few minutes later saw some faint blasts of lightning. Over the next few hours the storm built in strength and was right on top of Malibu by 1 am. I was already in bed but the dog was acting up and I soon realized I would not be sleeping until the storm passed. I went online to wunderground.com and looked at the storm track function and could see that the system was going to move right over Point Dume and up the shore along Zuma beach. I grabbed the camera and headed up to Encinal above El Pescador beach and here are the results. These images were shot around 2am. Exposures were between 2-3 minutes long. Limited edition Prints will be available. Please email me at Maliburealestate@mac.com

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