Commercial Real Estate Photography Pricing and Licensing

By Gina Lam 29/04/2023

Commercial real estate photography pricing and licensing can trigger questions for those who have just entered this unique branch. The reason is that the type of shoot, location, tools, and license required for commercial properties are apparently different from the residential ones. To help you neither underprice nor overcharge your work, this article shall provide you with package types and licensing usage for commercial house photography. .

1. Considerations For Pricing Commercial Real Estate Photography

Image Number and Time

Similar to charge for real estate photography, you can choose between two strategies for commercial real estate photography – per image and per day. As for the first strategy, the cost will be counted per photograph, which falls around $100 on average. While with the other option, the price depends on the the time taken, which directly related to the complex architecture or the square footage. Besides, photographers can request different price rate for shoot taken in day time and evening time. Specifically, the charge for daytime photos ranges between $150 to $400, while it costs about $700-$900 for dusk images.

Other factors

Some common factors that affect the charge are image adjustments, post-processing, location, and license usage, etc. Given all those factors adding up, the photo shoot for a commercial property can cost from $1500 to $15000.

*_{Post-processing adds more values and thus, more cost}*

Besides, there comes consideration in pricing for special services as:

Videography: the service will of course requires extra charge for certain camera gears and editing. For a detailed reference of video editing price, you can look through our previous article How To Set Your Real Estate Videography Pricing.
Drone footage: A drone will be in need for Real Estate Drone Videos, and because some areas require a remote pilot certificate, charging more for aerial videos is reasonable.

2. Examples of Pricing Packages For Commercial Real Estate Photography

Example pricing for specific case

For the best illustration of various factors for calculating, below is a final quote with specific number:

Commercial property for 1,000-square meter: $140
Image editing with high-resolution quality: $270
One-year license on a website for 30 images: $250 x 30 = $750
Transportation: $20
Total Cost: $1.180

Also, packages for commercial property photography can be categorized by types of property as follows:

Medium-Rise Building

Photographer’s fees: $1400 (consists of a prior-to-shoot location research, photoshoot (both interior and exterior) + post-production services: $600 (includes RAW file processing, about 10 edited TIFF/JPEG final outputs);
Other production charges: $400 (includes digital service, transit, extra editing, etc.);
Total: $2400.

Small Commercial Property

Photographer’s fees: $1100 (consists of a prior-to-shoot location research, photoshoot + post-production services: $400 (RAW file processing, about 5 TIFF/JPEG files final outputs);
Other production charges: $50 (includes transit, extra edits, etc. );
Total: $1550.

retail-restaurant-commercial-real-estate-photography-pricing — *_{Small office properties costs less to photograph}*

Large 3-Building Complex

Photographer’s fees: $2700 (consists of a prior-to-shoot location research, 3 photoshoot days (exterior, interior + dusk shoot) + post-processing services: $1000 (includes RAW file processing, about 15 TIFF/JPEG final outputs);
Additional expenditures: $600 (includes fees for digital services, transit, extra editing, etc.);
Total: $4300.

3. Licensing And Copyright Related Photographing Commercial Real Estate

Usage License

Photography in general is considered a creative business, so the commercial property photos ofcourse are intellectual property of photographers. The final outputs do not belong to the customers, but actually allowed to use according to the license.

Therefore, it is essential to note that a license agreement made before shooting commercial real estate will protect the photographers’ rights in case any copyright violations occur. It also directly affects the total charge for the shoot, which is known as licensing fee or marketing usage fee. For commercial real estate, the marketing usage is usually the rights to market the property photos on websites, collateral materials, and other similar platforms. Any additional usage not licensed in the agreement will be charged extra. Normally, the licensing price is higher than the creative price.

Model Release

real-estate-photo-editing-services — _{Model release is necessary as there might be appearance of random people}

Unlike private residential properties, where people being in the photos are not a concern to any parties, photographing commercial areas with people involved is a sensitive issue. In other words, you should have the agreement of people within the commercial property that there might be their appearance in the final photographs.

Photographers should take model release as an important step in the planning and preparation phase. To be more clear, they should hand out model releases to the property owner so they can be signed and handed in before any photoshoot is conducted.

Final Thoughts

To wrap up, I hope that this article has demystified all of your questions about commercial real estate photography pricing and licensing. As clear packages and examples for price along with explanation for licensing are provided, new photographers in this unique branch of photography should be more confident to make their first deal with customers!

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