Real Estate Photographer in Austin, TX

Austin Is Not One Housing Market, It Is About A Dozen

ZABE Media is an Austin company. We are based here, we live here, and Austin is the city we shoot more than any other. This is our home market rather than a place we drive out to.

Austin is not one housing market, it is about a dozen, and they need different photographs. A 1930s bungalow in Travis Heights, a downtown high rise unit on Rainey, a mid century ranch in Allandale, a Mueller row house and a new build out past Circle C have almost nothing in common except a zip code.

What changes by part of Austin

Central and downtown

High rise condos on Rainey Street, in the Seaholm district and along West Avenue are about light and view. Which way the unit faces decides the entire shoot, because a west facing unit at four in the afternoon is unusable and the same unit at six is the best photograph of the day. We plan around it rather than turning up at whatever time was free.

The central east and south neighborhoods

Bouldin Creek, Travis Heights, Zilker, East Austin, Hyde Park and Clarksville are full of small older homes, frequently renovated, often with a footprint that makes wide interiors difficult. These are the properties where a floor plan earns its keep, because a buyer looking at eight photographs of a 1,100 square foot bungalow genuinely cannot tell how it fits together.

West Austin

Tarrytown, Rollingwood, Barton Hills and out toward Westlake. Larger lots, mature trees, hill country views and serious price points. This is where natural twilight, aerial and a film stop being optional extras.

North and northeast

Crestview, Brentwood, Windsor Park, Mueller and the newer development out toward the airport. A lot of renovated mid century stock plus dense modern infill, and a buyer pool heavy on people relocating, which makes a 3D tour more valuable than it would be in a purely local market.

South and southwest

Circle C, Shady Hollow, Sunset Valley and out along 45. Newer, larger, family oriented homes on standard lots where the shoot is straightforward and consistency matters more than anything clever.

Flying a drone in Austin

Austin needs more care than the surrounding cities. A large part of the city sits inside controlled airspace around Austin Bergstrom International, and there are further restrictions over parts of downtown and around the Capitol complex. Flying legally there means requesting LAANC authorization for the specific location and altitude, which we do for every address before the shoot rather than finding out on the day.

The Austin buyer is often not in Austin

A large share of buyers in this city are relocating from out of state and shopping remotely. That changes what a listing needs. The gallery is frequently the entire showing, and a Matterport tour or a Zillow 3D Home tour is what turns a remote browser into someone who books a flight. It is the single most common thing we tell Austin agents they are under investing in.

Booking and travel around Austin

We are central, so travel inside the city is short and it is included in every package. Traffic is the real variable: an afternoon shoot in far north Austin means crossing the city at the wrong time, so we schedule around it rather than pretending 183 behaves.