Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
House tours are no fun for real estate agents. They take precious hours of your time and require adapting to another person's schedule, all with no guarantee of a sale. But with virtual tour software, all of that is a thing of the past.
Virtual tours serve as an excellent stand-in for a house tour. Even as a digital representation, they can help potential home buyers understand what they're dealing with. That said, is it worth all the effort of building the tour and paying to host it online?
In this guide, we'll discuss why virtual tours can help sell your home faster. Then we'll show you where you can go to get started.
Let's be clear, a virtual tour is only a tool to make the home selling process easier. It's not a replacement for in-person home tours, nor is it intended to be a one-for-one accurate home depiction. This is a marketing tool that makes your operations faster and more efficient.
Traditional home tours can take a considerable chunk out of your day. If you're a traveling real estate agent, it can be a real hassle to arrange these meetings with potential home buyers. No-shows and reschedules only waste more of your time.
With 3D home tours, you offload a lot of that wasted time into something more productive. You'll now spend more of your precious time focused on other properties to ensure they sell in a reasonable time frame.
The vast majority of those who come by to view homes are just passing through. They're evaluating their options or just curious about local properties. It's not a good use of your time to entertain those who don't have serious intentions.
Virtual tour software features allow them to do a quick look-through whenever they want and on whichever device they want. Since most people form a first impression in as few as seven seconds, most will decide the home is not for them. Better that they make that decision in the comfort of their home rather than in person at the property.
Virtual tour software doesn't just save time; it speeds up the process of buying a home. It allows those serious buyers to see the house as much as they want when they want. There won't be any schedule conflicts if their only available time is when you're off the clock.
At the end of the day, that means they require fewer visits before they're sold.
The beauty of the internet is that you won't have trouble reaching your audience. Whether ads on websites or social media, marketing agencies can guarantee that your messages get to potential home buyers.
A virtual tour is an excellent marketing tool that ups engagement. Higher engagement means more people see the home. More offers will come in, expediting the time it normally takes to sell.
If you prefer DIY, you can make the tour yourself. Google Street View is an excellent and free solution for this. It allows you to stitch together still photos of your home to make them into a 360 panoramic.
From there, you'll use Google Tour Creator. This takes your 360 images and renders them into a virtual tour preview.
Additional tips for taking virtual tour photos:
Not comfortable with taking the pictures and stitching them together yourself? Fortunately, there are a lot of options for you to choose from. These companies will be varying degrees of "hands-off," depending on how much you want to do yourself.
This is the option for those who want simple, easy-to-use software to create a tour in minutes. Kuula allows you to make a free account and create 100 virtual tours per month.
One of the largest of its class, Matterport goes further than typical tours. It gathers depth data, allowing you to create a 3D space that is accurate and has a floor plan. You can do this with a standard iPhone or hire a professional.
Creating intricate 3D models like this allows you to do some home staging. This is where you add digital decor and furniture elements to a virtualized room.
Metareal, like Matterport, allows you to create a 3D model that's more accurate to the home. It has free options like Kuula, as well as advanced paid tiers.
CloudPano is like the rest but does have tours that will expire within 120 days. The free plan gives you up to 360 photos, and from then on, it's a monthly plan.
This option is more oriented to open outdoor spaces. It's an excellent option for a property that has a lot of fields or a section of an empty lot. Free options limit you to only 15 uploads every week.
Virtual tour software is not just a plus for selling a home these days; it's a must. It streamlines the process of displaying a property to potential home buyers. You're guaranteed to sell a home much quicker than if you were to rely on a traditional home tour alone.
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