Real Estate Photography with Greg Muntz of Muntz Studios

Tuesday, February 2, 2021 | Blackbird TV

David is joined by Greg Muntz to discuss the importance of professional photography in real estate. #BlackbirdTV

About this segment of Blackbird TV

Guest: Greg Muntz, Owner / Photographer, Muntz Photography. To learn more about our guest, visit MuntzStudios.com, or call 716-673-6560.

Recorded: August 28, 2020

Published: February 2, 2021

Segment transcript

Here with Greg Muntz from Muntz Studios in Denver Colorado. Denver!? You’re here in Buffalo? This is great. So we thought we’d take the opportunity to talk a little bit about what you do at Muntz Studios. I’m an architectural photographer by trade, and the past eight years, I’ve started to specialize in real estate mostly. So I help market properties and started primarily with residential properties and have moved in to shooting a lot of commercial properties as well. Comparatively residential real estate is really different from what we do at Blackbird, because we’re selling at auction almost exclusively. And utilizing these kinds of tools I think is fabulous because we’ll put together a property information package and we try to put as much information as we can available so that a prospective purchaser can make an intelligent decision whether they want to participate in the auction sale. By taking this next… being able to really provide spectacular imagery of what we’re actually selling. It gives them a better indication of whether they want even participate. Can you elaborate on how you can help us with that? Yeah, I think just using these different tools. I mean images I think are still number one. They’re invaluable for marketing doing 3D tours. It allows people to just view and experience the property before they actually have to go there. For me, I guess it’s the all these tools: photos; virtually staging; you just get more attraction when things look good, if you just look at a crummy photo or whatever, you might just disregard that not actually go to the auction or commit to possibly purchasing something and for me personally with everything I do I know that, from clients, what they’ve told me when they’ve looked at their numbers before using professional photos. They’re seeing like 5 to 10 times the amount of visitors on their web, clicks on the website visitations in general or showings. A typical sale that we might run into would be a bankruptcy sale or a bank-directed sale of an office space, not unlike this, and very often we come in and it’s a train wreck. Because the people left, they left it disheveled and there’s a big difference between tidying the space, cleaning the space, and oftentimes the furniture is gone, if we can provide imagery with staged office furniture, it will give a prospective purchaser a better indication of what it looks like when it’s not “distressed.” We can do that without being disingenuous. Is that true? Oh absolutely and I think commercial properties, typically, businesses will move in there and they’ll renovate or make it their own, anyway. So from what I’ve seen, most commercial properties that I shoot can just be empty space. Stripped to the bone so when you can stage it, it really helps people visualize how they could use the space out how it can function or for their particular needs and their business. Show me again what you showed me the other day. Yeah what I was showing you the other day was virtual staging. I photographed this… Whose house is that? It’s beautiful! Look at that! This was for a builder doing a residential build. This is virtually staged? It’s virtually staged. Show me the before pictures. They wanted to do pre-marketing on this property. Wait a minute. This room is even finished yet. There’s no floor in it. No. So what you can do… So the purpose of this… this is crazy! The purpose of this was to do pre-marketing for a build she wanted… They were trying to sell these units and it wasn’t finished yet. And she wanted to have images that she could sell and give people an idea of how to visualize the space and use these for marketing before they were finishing, and anybody could actually go and see the property. So, I’m selling a warehouse and somebody wants to understand what it’s going to look like when they knock out the wall and put four dock bays in the back. You could do that. Yeah, absolutely. Hey, what’s it look like with the pallet racking over here? You can do that. Yeah, that’s so cool. I mean… You could always have done that with various softwares, but with this stuff, I mean, it looks real. Yeah. It’s kind of the point where the tech has gotten so good. I mean the subtleties of the the lighting the shadows that are cast on the floor or the walls from the objects are there. I think it’s fantastic and the quality of the stuff that you’re showing me is just it’s exciting and I can’t wait to get to use it in our practice. Thanks. Yeah.