How We Produced TV Commercials for a Real Estate Company on a Small Business Budget

Mar 21

Just wrapped post production on :30 and :15 commercials for Home Finders Real Estate in Mt. Kisco, NY, and this one is a good example of a production approach that more small businesses should know about.

The brief was straightforward: Home Finders needed broadcast-ready commercials for local TV and streaming, both a :30 and a :15 cutdown, without the budget for a full live-action shoot with locations, crew, and talent. So we built the spots using a combination of licensed stock footage and custom animation, and the result is a polished, professional commercial that holds up on television and streaming platforms at a fraction of what a full production day would cost.

When Stock Footage and Animation Make Sense

Not every commercial needs to be shot from scratch. For real estate, the visual language is well established: aerial shots of neighborhoods, interior walk-throughs, happy families in front of homes. That footage exists in abundance in professional stock libraries, licensed for commercial use, and when it's selected carefully and cut well, it's indistinguishable from custom-shot material to the average viewer.

Animation handles the rest: logo reveals, text overlays, motion graphics that give the spot energy and visual structure. Combined with a professional voiceover and proper broadcast audio, you end up with something that looks like it cost three times what it did.

This approach works particularly well for home improvement and real estate commercials, service businesses, and any company where the "product" is a concept or outcome rather than something you can physically demonstrate on camera. It's also how we deliver our commercial package at a price point that makes sense for local and regional businesses.

The :30 and :15 Strategy

Producing both a :30 and :15 in a single session is something we always recommend. The :30 tells the full story and runs on local cable and streaming platforms like Hulu. The :15 is cut for pre-roll, social media, and situations where you need to make an impression fast. One production budget, two assets, twice the flexibility in where and how you run your campaign.

If you're a business in Westchester, the Hudson Valley, or anywhere in the NY Tri-State area looking for a TV commercial production approach that delivers broadcast quality without a broadcast budget, let's talk.