About ProperFocus
ProperFocus Real Estate Photography serves Real Estate Agents, property owners, and builders in Dane and surrounding counties in South Central Wisconsin. ProperFocus' goal is to help agents help their clients get more prospective buyers into a property, to help those buyers remember the property over others they have seen, and ultimately to help get a better price more quickly for the property seller.
ProperFocus was founded and is owned by Vince Padilla. Both Real Estate and photography are in Vince's blood. He was an Agent of Keller Williams in Madison and Prudential Community Realty in Sun Prairie. He has held his Real Estate Salesperson's License since 2003, though he currently is not active with a broker. Vince's mother was an Agent of Century 21 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and his Grandfather was a Broker in Lincoln, Nebraska. His other grandfather was a photographer for the Air Force in the Korean War, and he counts several visual artists among his mother's family.
Vince himself has been taking photographs since childhood. Prior to entering Real Estate Photography, Vince was a part-time professional doing portrait, event, and fine art photography. He has had two gallery showings of his art in 2008 alone (see this page for his other professional photography).
Being a part-time professional photographer during his time in the Real Estate Industry, Vince became frustrated by the quality of the photography he encountered. His buyers often felt that the photos that listing agents uploaded to the MLS were not particularly helpful in choosing properties to view.
Conversely, Vince's sellers were very happy with how his photographs helped to sell their properties. Vince's marketing materials - flyers, homebooks, MLS photos, and virtual tours - brought in prospective buyers and helped them remember the properties.
Buyers' agents who showed Vince's listings often commented on the quality of his marketing materials, usually because of the quality of the photography. He wanted to offer his services to other Realtors, but did not because of the potential conflict of interest (representing buyers and sellers on one hand and helping other Realtors market competing properties on the other).
After speaking with many agents, however, Vince determined that a need for high quality Real Estate Photography existed in South Central Wisconsin. The slowdown in the market at the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008 cemented this opinion - sellers need good photography and marketing now more than ever.
For that reason, in June 2008, Vince left Prudential, a brokerage he loved, to be a full-time professional photographer who can make a difference for listing agents and their clients.