The model Ori Harel spent 10 years building is going away. Now he’s building a next-generation, AI-driven content creation platform. Here’s why you should pivot in your business, too.
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The journey started when I got fired from my yogurt shop job at 17. I was lost, with no real direction and ended up buying a cheap drone to mess around with. That drone led to a few small real estate shoots for friends. Those shoots led to bigger ones.
Within a few years, I was running Lumara Media, a national production company with footage appearing on Netflix’s Selling Sunset, CNBC’s Listing Impossible and, somehow, MrBeast’s main YouTube channel.
Over the past decade, my team has captured more than $50 billion in real estate across luxury residential, global resorts and institutional portfolios for clients including Blackstone, Greystar, Toll Brothers and Lennar. I’ve had a front-row seat to how the top agents and developers think about content, what they’re willing to pay for it, and how those expectations are shifting.
I’m sharing this because I’ve spent the past few years watching something unfold that I think most agents haven’t fully processed yet. And rather than protect the business I built, I’ve decided to build what I believe will replace it.
The shift I couldn’t ignore
Around 2021, when COVID pushed the entire industry toward virtual tours and remote everything, demand for digital content exploded. Business was good. But I started noticing something underneath it.
3D home scans were getting sharper. AI image tools were emerging. The same technology driving all this new demand was also getting better at replacing the people fulfilling it.
We shifted Lumara toward more institutional work with longer contracts and bigger clients. Not because residential was slow. Because I had a feeling the residential side wouldn’t require people like me for much longer.
That feeling never went away. If anything, it got louder.
The economics are already upside down
Here’s what I see happening on the ground.
The cost of professional-quality content is collapsing. Five years ago, a polished listing video cost $800 to $1,500. Today, talented teenagers with a gimbal and free editing software are producing viral content that rivals what agencies were charging thousands for.
At the same time, agent expectations have shifted. They don’t want to coordinate schedules with a photographer. They don’t want a vendor on-site during a client walkthrough. They don’t want to wait 72 hours for deliverables.
They want content fast, they want it affordable, and increasingly, they’re finding ways to get it without hiring anyone.
According to the National Association of Realtors, 73 percent of sellers say they’re more likely to list with an agent who uses video. But most agents still aren’t doing it consistently. The friction is too high. The cost feels unpredictable. The process takes too long.
That gap between what agents know they should do and what they actually do is exactly where AI is about to step in.
A $15K photo
My grandfather worked in commercial construction in the 1980s. He once showed me a gorgeous aerial shot of a building he’d developed. I asked what drone they used.
He laughed. They hired a Bell broadcast helicopter. That single image cost $15,000.
When I told him I could capture a similar shot with a $1,500 drone, he thought I was exaggerating. He couldn’t believe the quality would hold up.
I think about that conversation often, because I believe we’re about to have it again. The tools that cost hundreds of dollars today will cost a few dollars within a couple of years. An agent will be able to upload phone photos and receive broadcast-ready video and HDR photos in minutes, with accurate room layouts, professional styling and smooth motion.
This isn’t a prediction about some distant future. The core technology already exists. Adoption is the only thing lagging behind.
I’ve seen this pattern before
I’ve now watched two major disruptions reshape real estate media.
The transition from film to digital gutted the large architectural photography firms that once dominated the industry. Entire companies with dozens of employees disappeared within a few years.
Then, drones made helicopter photography obsolete almost overnight. The same shot that cost my grandfather $15,000 became a $200 add-on.
Each time, the professionals in the middle of the disruption said it wouldn’t happen, that it would take decades or that quality would never match. Each time, they were wrong.
AI is the third wave. And based on what I’m seeing, it’s moving faster than the first two combined.
What this means for agents
I don’t think photographers and videographers vanish tomorrow. But I do think the role changes significantly.
Professional media production becomes a premium service for high-end listings rather than a default expense on every transaction. For the majority of listings, AI-generated content will be good enough, fast enough and cheap enough that it becomes the new baseline.
The agents who recognize this shift early will move faster than their competition. Listings go live the same day. Content bottlenecks disappear. Marketing becomes a speed advantage rather than a coordination headache.
But speed is only part of it. The bigger opportunity is volume. Most agents treat listing content as a single production moment: hire the photographer, get the shots, post the listing. That’s not how the top agents I’ve worked with operate.
Filming celebrity Realtors for years taught me something important. The best ones never stop producing. Market updates, neighborhood walkthroughs, behind-the-scenes moments, client stories. They’re constantly keeping their audience warm, so when someone is ready to buy or sell, that agent is already top of mind.
AI tools are about to make that kind of always-on content strategy accessible to every agent, not just the ones with six-figure marketing budgets.
Start now. Experiment with the AI tools that already exist. Virtual staging, photo enhancement, automated video editors. Use them on a lower-stakes listing. Learn the workflow.
This matters more than you might think, because the AI landscape changes overnight. The tool that felt clunky six months ago might be exceptional now. The agents who stay curious and keep testing will spot the breakthroughs before their competitors do. The ones who write off the whole category will be playing catch-up for years.
The agents who wait will spend the next few years wondering why their competitors seem to be everywhere at once.
Why I’m pivoting
I could have spent the next decade protecting my existing production model. There’s still money in traditional real estate media, and there will be for a while.
But the tailwind here is undeniable. Costs are dropping. Quality is improving. Agents need more content, faster. Sellers expect video. Social media demands volume. Everything is pointing in the same direction.
That’s why I’m now building technology in this space instead of protecting what I spent a decade growing. Not because I wanted to compete with the business I built. Because I could see what was replacing it.
The model I spent 10 years building is going away. Not immediately, but soon enough that it matters. I’d rather be the one building what comes next than the one explaining why I didn’t see it coming.
The shift is already here. Most people just haven’t noticed yet.
Ori Harel is founder and head of product at Reel-E. Connect with him on Instagram or LinkedIn.
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