Presentation is everything when it comes to selling a home. From the photography, to the decor, and the open houses; showing a house is nothing short of a small scale production. Just one small error can be the difference between a prospective buyer contacting you, and them passing to look at another home. If your lighting is terrible, photo quality is atrocious, or the open house features a lackluster welcome there’s a high chance the house will be stuck on the market.
How can you help your properties move? Investing in a virtual real estate tour can drastically sway your buyers chances of viewing the property. Virtual real estate tours are a great way to allow your prospective buyers to do their own walk-through. virtual real estate tours are a fantastic way to cut down on dead leads and wasted time on failed tours.
Save Yourself Some Time
Think about how many times you’ve had a walk-through scheduled and the following happens. You rush out of the office, get stuck in traffic, finally arrive at the house, only to receive a phone call from the client saying they’ve changed their mind last minute and will not be meeting you there. It may not be an every day occurrence, but it still happens frequently enough to warrant addressing. With a virtual real estate tour, you are able to either directly send or upload onto a website a virtual walk-through for the clients to view before scheduling their physical walk-through.
A virtual real estate tour is easy to set up, quick to accomplish, and the results speak for themselves. 10 years ago panoramic or 360 photography was considered a luxury when showing real estate. Today the same technology behind those options has now lead to full virtual real estate tours, only now virtual real estate tours are being considered essential and expected.
How does it work?
First, you need to set up a date with the owners of the property to be outside of the house for a couple hours. Second, schedule a deep cleaning. If the house is foreclosed, abandoned, or the owners are out of state; hiring a professional cleaning company makes a huge impact. Make sure all clutter, family photos, and personal papers are all tucked away prior to shooting your virtual real estate tour.
Now that the property is prepared for photography, it’s time to review with the provider of your virtual real estate tour the amount of time the shoot will take, and if there are any special requirements. These can be things like moving furniture and adjusting lighting.
Control the Presentation: The Property is Fully Preserved at a Moment in Time
An additional factor to consider is image archiving. This isn’t putting a time stamp on your photo, it’s making sure that the virtual real estate tour is able to speak to a wide market and being available at a future date. Ask your virtual tour provider for their archiving options – if needed, you could make your virtual property tour available for years. Unless major renovations occur during this period, the virtual real estate tour you are having shot serves as a long term investment.
For rental properties that typically get rented out to new tenants yearly; ensuring that you capture the property while completely vacant or without a clashing or bold decor can be a very helpful move. Even though the future tenants know their rental property will be a temporary fixture in their life; studies have shown that bold colors, decor, or themes can be as much of a turn-off as a turn-on in the real estate market.
More Than Just a Virtual Real Estate Tour
When you have a virtual real estate tour completed by Looking Glass, you get more than just a tour. You are able to access accurate measurements of the house, get a virtual rendering of the properties floor plan. Genrate phots and video from the tour. One of the most common issues with traditional photography in real estate is that there is no indication of the flow of the property. It’s often hard to tell which room is attached to which, how long the hallways are, the placements of the closets, and the overall dimensions of bedrooms. These problems are all now a thing of the past, by allowing Looking Glass to provide a true value to your real estate listing.
Now What Do I Do With My Completed Virtual Real Estate Tour?
Virtual property tours are available in a variety of formats for display on your website, your MLS listings, your email marketing, and more.
After the virtual real estate tour has been completed, stitched together, and uploaded onto a server the possibilities are endless. Facebook now features support for viewing virtual real estate tours, along with real estate giant, Zillow.
Clicking through a virtual real estate tour on a desktop computer may be the first thing that comes to mind for its application. There are a plethora of mobile apps that allow anyone to turn their smart phone into a virtual reality device. Some of the 21st century real estate pioneers have even gone so far as to have custom Google Cardboard viewers printed for their company and passed out to prospective clients.
More than simple pictures. A 3d virtual property tour can help you convert more home shoppers into home buyers by providing an easy way to experience a property in scale via their favorite devices on their schedule and quickly. In today’s real estate market, agents need every advantage these new technologies can provide to help them showcase more properties.
