Yesterday I created my first virtual tour of a Daycare Center; it is located in Portage, Indiana. Click on the banner to check it out!

Here are a couple of photos:

Four Seasons Virtual Tours has been in business since 2006. We provide tours in Northwest Indiana and the Chicagoland area. You can see our latest real estate tours at Open House Northwest Indiana.

If you're concerned that "going green" is an expensive proposition, this article gives you some ideas for doing it inexpensively:

Going GREEN - What's In It For Me?

Enjoy!

Hi All:

If you live in the North Olmsted, OH area and are finding that working out of your spare bedroom, loft, dining room, family room - you name it - is getting a little frustrating because of cramped quarters or too many interruptions - here's a possibility.

I'm bringing it up because the price seems reasonable: $179,900.

5135 Dover Center Road

In the following blog post I'll put a Postlet.

I found this article on EzineArticles and it offers some pretty good hints for people who need to modify or refinance a mortgage.

Seven Things to Remember When Seeking a Mortgage Modification

Hi All:

Carol Woodard has some great tips on things homeowners can do now:

"Some Things You Can Control"

http://EzineArticles.com/?id=2202370.

Hi All:

I was getting ready to do a newsletter article for a client on real haunted places in their area when I had this idea.

Many of the fun haunted houses that groups do for Halloween have websites. They might be candidates for virtual tours. Or maybe not, since they don't want to ruin the fright for potential attendees.

In fact, come to think of it, real haunted places often have websites and might want a virtual tour.

Debbie

When Mike and I first started doing tours with Real Tour Vision, we were a little confused. We thought we could only have a total of 30 pictures per tour. And with every full panorama being 12 pictures, it was a challenge to put together a tour - especially for large homes. We usually did one full spin, a couple of partial spins and some stills.

Imagine our surprise and elation (and embarrassment) when we discovered the tours have 30 slots that can be filled with full panoramas, partials or stills - not just 30 pictures! Now Mike does lots of full spins, some partials and some stills. Our Four Seasons Virtual Tours clients (real estate agents and the sellers) seem to be happy with the tours.

However...I personally feel the tours as we are doing them now are too big. I think the smaller tours were easier to look at. Do we really need a panorama of the kitchen/family room from two different directions, plus stills? Do we really need to do a full panorama of a large room when a lot of it is blank walls? A good piece of art or writing is often better when it is "tighter". (I have to admit I'm a minimalist.)

I get impatient looking at them sometimes, so I'm wondering what a buyer might think. On the other hand, maybe the buyers want as many pictures as possible from every angle in order to get a good idea of what a home looks like. After all, they don't have to just let the tour run, they can control what rooms they look at.

Finally, the tours are taking much longer to photograph and stitch. We'll never get up to 500 tours a year at this rate!

What do you think?

With newspaper readership down, savy real estate agents are looking for alternative ways to attract buyers to their listings. Internet advertising is especially important because according to a National Association of Realtors survey, more than 75% of buyers are starting their home search on line.

If you have a property on a main road or in a busy section of a neighborhood, PanoRiders may be another advertising option to add to your arsenal.

The concept is simple, but VERY effective. Each PanoRider advertises a single property website URL for the home - such as www.123MainStreet.com - along with a high quality panorama from the virtual tour.

Since our parent company, Real Tour Vision, started offering this option they have been keeping track of how much traffic they generate. The PanoRiders are generating more traffic than Realtor.com, the local MLS, and agent and broker websites combined! The PanoRiders are bringing in at least 50% of the traffic to RTV virtual tours - and in some cases up to 75% of the traffic!

If you already have a website that you can have the sign point to, you can use just the PanoRider. The basic riders are 8" high x 30" wide, and custom sizes are available.

Or you can use the PanoRider and Property Specific Website package. This includes the sign rider, a customized domain name, and a website that features not only the virtual tour but enhanced listing information as well. The site is active for one year.

Signs have always generated a lot of traffic for listings. Now turn street traffic into web traffic with PanoRiders and Property Specific Websites!

Virtual tours save gas - buyers can see homes online first and choose just the ones that most closely fit their dreams. This also saves wear and tear on the agent!

Four Seasons Virtual Tours has been providing high quality, true 360 degree virtual tours to Northwest Indiana and the South Chicago Suburbs since 2006.

Late last year we did a virtual tour for one of our occasional realtor clients (it was his third tour).

In April we were called by another one of our clients from a different real estate office to do a new tour for her - it was the same home.

In the past we have had tours on listings that changed hands in the same office. Both of the original listing agents gave permission for the new agent to use the tour on the "new" listing.

This time the listing had expired and the owners had gone to a new agent and a different office (not even the same franchise).

What to do? The original agent would not give his permission to transfer the tour. We decided that we had to reshoot the tour for the second agent. We were a little uncomfortable charging twice for a tour - but we did go out and photograph the entire tour a second time. The homeowners were a little surprised to see us again - but they understood the situation.

What do you think?

Four Seasons Virtual Tours is a full-service, true 360 degree virtual tour provider serving Northwest Indiana and the South Chicago Suburbs.