Real Estate Photography with Phone Cameras

The time is near.

Don’t be surprised when any of your Realtors actually whip up their iPhones or Huawei and deliver great photos for their marketing anymore. With the latest iPhone 11, you have a 13mm equivalent that takes more wider photos than your usual 16-35 or 17-40 professional lenses. Previously before that happened, I always have to attach an external lens to the phone which widens it to 18mm equivalent. It’s a hassle.

My Usual Work Flow

I will usually use my Sony A9 full frame with some strobes and fire my shots, take out the SD card and head back to my trustworthy Macbook Pro to finish off in Lightroom Classic.

Some of my works

As a hobbyist, this has been my work flow for my clients’ portfolio of photos and they have worked well for me. But such work flow is harder for many of the current realtors to follow since there’s knowledge gap on photography and editing. We do teach such classes in our SRI Enrich series free of charge.

Photos with the new iPhone

These photos are taken with the new iPhone 11 Pro on its 0.5 wide angle and digitally touched up with Lightroom Mobile.

If you are keen on visiting the above, feel free to contact any SRI realtors for a visit to Avenue South Residence.

The problem I face with the new mobile workflow is that there is no RAW support for its wide angle lens yet and the dynamic range for the shots is not enough for me for changes; the plus point of such mobile work flow is that the phone cameras are smart enough to stitch multiple shots together (HDR) such that you get a crisp foreground and background.

Would I be totally be replacing my Sony Full frame gear with mobile camera? The answer is no, but I can see where the flexibility is when it comes to portability of gears and taking reference shots before using my gears (I use both 12mm fixed and 16-35mm to achieve my marketing material looks)

SRI Enrich with Benson – Mobile Photography for Real Estate

Realtors alike if you are keen to explore Team SRI, speak to any of our SRI team leaders or team mates for more information about our Enrich classes and to find out how we could benefit you as a team to win together.

These Enrich classes happen very often and are crafted by experienced and practicing SRI mentors that will benefit and value add your realtors’ journey.

Realtors – Improving your Productivity

People are usually curious how a full-time real estate agent schedule looks like, since time is being managed by them freely and they have the rights to choose when, and when not to work. Here’s a glimpse of my typical week.

A typical week in the life of Benson
A typical week in the life of Benson

My schedules are usually packed and yet spaced carefully for more opportunities to appear as the days unfold. What could have helped me and made all these even possible? These are the tools which I’ve embedded in my daily life.

Calendars

The default calendar works well in my iPhone and Macbook but I’d usually love to spice it up so that it looks colorful and fun. (Would be nice if any app dev does something that breaks down the different calendar to show the number of hours utilised!) This is extremely useful when you’re cooperating with your team mates since you can invite them and vice-versal.

The apps I use are WeekCal for my iPhone 6 Plus that syncs with iCloud. I do use Sunrise occassionally which syncs Evernote and phone reminders in as well for a great quick overview of what needs to be done for the next 3 days.


Rose, my abled assistant also takes care of my working partner Bruce and my time by managing a shared calendar on our personal and joint events.

Evernote

People who knows me know I’m a strong advocate of Evernote. I practically use this to keep track of all my leads, forecasting, team manage and remind myself of the tasks and big picture ahead. The functions are endless and practical, but these are the most important ones.

Search Box

Search box allows me to find my things very quickly as a very heavy EN user. Everything in my way gets into a notebook and it gets special attention when I have time to rearrange them later. People don’t really have to know how messy you are as long as you are fast to recall or could get to your documents fast. As the notes get very heavy, tagging is useful.

The OCR recognition has time to time proven it’s worth as well since the team mates and I share a common notebook with articles. These articles are essentially good for us to keep up with the history and latest of what is happening on the search subject and allow us to communicate better with our clients.

The search box is the best tool of Evernote
The search box is the best tool of Evernote

Continue reading “Realtors – Improving your Productivity”

5 Evernote Applications to Boost your Real Estate Sales

As I was writing about why Evernote was essential to my business 3 days ago and getting ready for the lesson for my team, it would be better to further deliberate on some scenarios why Evernote could boost your sales instead of just plain boasting about that green elephant. These are some snippet applications on what you could use your Evernote for in Real Estate.

Using a Pen and a Paper to Goal

Cool ainnit?
My goals for 2014

I love to doodle. It’s innate. And it’s still my best way to get many things done with even checklist boxes and things to do with scenes to follow. Since it’s the end of the year and most of us would write the goals for 2014, why not try this:-

Write your quarter goals for 2014 (Q1, Q2 nada nada) and have them broken down into what you would be doing on a piece of paper? I use Moleskin because I’m a sucker for quality products, but hey, a 555 jotter (your childhood 10cents book) will work here. Write down everything you want to do for 2014 and snap shot with Evernote ‘Document’ camera mode.

It’s that simple. Continue reading “5 Evernote Applications to Boost your Real Estate Sales”

Evernote for your Real Estate Business

After a good 7 years, I have been going through what is seemingly a high transition on how print media dropped its anchor of being the leader in information and coverage; where Real Estate sales became more transparent with different media portals, discussion boards, and even the way that you handle your clients have changed.

Brooding over the weekend, these are the factors which are important to me and why Evernote is a game changer and why you should use it to run your Real Estate business.

Why Do You Need a Third Brain

There’s too many things happening in our fast paced career. You have appointments to appointments, with things to follow through from different customers. You have things to learn everyday. You follow up with real estate news. New cooling measures break in, you have to follow through the regulatories to understand and see how it applies to each of your clients.

You drive. Calls come in, you have to probably “take notes” or call your clients later. This can go on, sometimes even 14 days in 2 weeks. And you forget something important in the midst. You get into trouble.

This happens. Continue reading “Evernote for your Real Estate Business”

Square Foot – A New Contender Tool in Singapore Property Analysis

Squarefoot is relatively new and yet it has been buzzing the Realtor’s arena as the new kid on the block which delivers property data putting itself in the ranks of StreetSine which has a more mature Singapore Realtors’ market share. What makes Square Foot tick?

Interesting Data

Shoebox yo?

Under market watch, you would be able to check out the trends on the shoebox units (definition: units less than 500sqft) in the market which is of interest to many property investors as of late on how they are doing, prior and after the TOP status on their annualized gains. You have interesting details such as returned units in the market, where such data is rarely available. This would give a more accurate forecast of the actual units which is being sold in a primary market as depicting whether the units are fully sold out (whether phases of their marketing is really doing well since you can get a good picture of how many units are returned back) Continue reading “Square Foot – A New Contender Tool in Singapore Property Analysis”

6 Essential Singapore Realtor Apps For Your iPhone

As Blackberry loses its market share further and failing to roll out its BB OS10 this year, I’ve mawkishly swapped to the latest iPhone 5 since we are promised by Apple that it should have a better standby battery life and talk time (the main disadvantage of the phone since the battery is integrated).

Geared with the iPhone as the main arsenal to my business, here are my must have apps for work which you might find them useful for you as well:-

1. Streetsine

The best tool ever developed to help agents get the earliest possible information on the local property market real-time. Use this and you look like a pro anytime, anywhere :) I’m on the investor subscription since Streetsine was born and I’m still loving it. Benefits of using this app includes

  • real-time update of property prices
  • location & amenities around 2km vicinity
  • comparative projects around search subject
  • useful listings from fellow Realtors using Streetsine

If you do not deal with commercial properties, you can opt for the Professional version (S$659 annually). If you’d like to use two instance of the app in both your iPad and iPhone, go for the Investor version ($959 annually).

Look out for “Streetsine” in the AppStore.

2. Sugarsync

Sugarsync

We can start the Dropbox vs. Sugarsync debacle again, but this is what I use. This great cloud storage offers 5gb free and has solutions for all your smart devices (Android, Blackberry, iPad, iPhone duh). Sugarsync can be useful when Continue reading “6 Essential Singapore Realtor Apps For Your iPhone”

Win a Free PropertyGuru Analytics Account!

propertyguru analytics for free?

Hi fellow colleagues, I will be giving away ONE YEAR FREE PROPERTYGURU ANALYTICS subscription, courtesy of Benson Koh (that’s myself) worth S$380 to a lucky partner agent whom I’ll randomly ballot from the e-mail subscription below.

NO GIMMICKS.

Now of course, I’d have to sell a little on what you should be expecting in your email if you’re signing up.

  1. Co-broke Quality Listings from myself and my champion team SRI5000 from time to time
  2. Tips and tricks to sell better in Real Estate
  3. Real Estate News Update

Its free, you’ll be ensured no-spam policy from me. And best of all, if you don’t like it, you can always choose to un-register (*but don’t be too cruel if you’re the lucky one to get the free account okay?). After filling up your name and email below, you will have to confirm the subscription via a confirmation email.

ONLY confirmed subscribers are eligible for the lucky draw.

The winner will be announced on 30th of June 2011 (Thurs) via both e-mail and the blog

Propertyguru’s Analytics Reviewed

Propertyguru Analytics

It has been awhile after my Streetsine review in August and September 2009, since then they have evolved pretty nicely as my “impress my clients” must-have tools which helped me save alot of time.

Propertyguru’s Analytics isn’t new to the market (well, newer as compared to Streetsine, but it should have been around for almost close to half a year I would reckon) and flaunts almost the same capabilities as Streetsine on the data compiled for comparative analysis for property searches. How does it really fair? ..

Continue reading “Propertyguru’s Analytics Reviewed”

StreetSine Teams Up with iProperty

Is this going to be a dream team for property agents and home owners? I love StreetSine reports as they always allow me to give the best and most accurate presentation to Homeowners on what is happening to their housing rentals and values. But to team up with iProperty for property listings. Hmm, It seems grey.

Anyway, here’s the press release from StreetSine

30 April 2010.

StreetSine Pte Ltd, Singapore’s leading provider of property information and analytics, is pleased to announce that it has teamed up with iProperty.com.sg, Singapore’s leading property search portal.

StreetSine will display iProperty property listings on www.streetsine.com. This means that when a property agent posts a home listing on iProperty.com.sg, it will automatically be displayed on StreetSine’s webpage, at no additional cost.

Continue reading “StreetSine Teams Up with iProperty”

StreetSine is Upgraded

I was talking about how good StreetSine reports were with its mass information for Home Owners and Property Agents.

Now, StreetSine brings in more good news with more helpful data for home seekers and home owners.

Dear StreetSine.com User,

Since the initial launch of our private residential Home Report service a few months back, we’ve received numerous positive testimonials from our users. Home hunters, investors and agents have told us that they’ve found their ideal homes faster and smarter with the service.

Today, we are excited to announce a list of upgrades from our user feedback.

1. We now track Days on the Market (DOM)
2. We also track price adjustments to property listings
3. We have added district trends to our other trends
4. We have substituted the Median Asking PSF for the Index Price in the executive summary so that the user has more flexibility in how he uses the Index Price
5. In the drop down for landed property report generation, we have allowed for search by street. We have also included the landed square feet in the drop down. The latter will aid in the quicker selection of comparable properties.
6. Made the summary report more user friendly by making several changes, such as changing the figures to PSF.

For the Agent:

7. At the top of the Home Report, agents will soon have the option to enter their client name so that it reads “Prepared for (client)”
8. We have enlarged the “Prepared by (agent)” at the bottom of the page as well as added a disclaimer for the agent

You can already view these changes in the sample Home Report at http://www.streetsine.com and we hope you will take a look.

We are also in the final testing of our inter-active Home Report. Subscribers will soon be able to customize the report with a few simple clicks.

Thank you for your consideration. Stay tuned for more updates brought to you by StreetSine Analytics Team!

Have a good weekend,
StreetSine Analytics Team

So fellow Realtor, get your subscription with a $200 discount on a StreetSine unlimited report generation today. Don’t be left out ;)