Helpful Websites 

My disclaimer here is that I am not getting paid to promote anyone on this blog.  I am just spreading some information that I have. 

In the last marketing session I had with our agents we were discussing some helpful websites.  There is a lot of information out there that can help us as agents.  The problem I always hear in my office is that there is so much information coming in that the agents have a hard time deciding what is good and what is not.  I did a little research and know of a few places to find some useful information.  I will start posting some of this to blog groups as I gather more.

Visual Tours 

In Tucson Arizona, we differ a virtual tour from a visual tour in that the visual tour is more of a slideshow and a virtual tour is a 360 degree view of the home.  The visual tours are gaining popluarity for a few reasons.  First is that many of these visual tours will load on your web browser faster than a high resolution virtual tour.  That is changing as technology becomes more advanced, but it is something to consider.  Secondly, and perhaps more importantly to your seller and your listing presentation, is that you can decide what you want the consumer on the internet to see.  A virtual tour is a 360 degree tour of each room.  With this, the consumer will see EVERYTHING in that room.  So if you have a home where there are highlights, but maybe not everything is so great, a visual tour is nice.  You could take a photo of the beautiful pool, but leave out the photo of the neighbors old pick up truck parked in his backyard. 

The company Imagemaker 360 does both the virtual tour and the visual tour (they call it the MOSTour).  Locally in Tucson, Arizona you can use Virtual Tours of Tucson who uses the imagemager 360 product.

There is also a free website www.VirtuallyShow.com where you download your still photos of the property and it will create a visual tour for you to post to your website and/or MLS.  Check with you local MLS for guidelines.

There is also an interesting Map and Visual Tour combination called Mapwing where you can draw or download a floorplan and download still photos that relate to the floorplan.  There is advertising around the tour (since it is free), which I do not like, and therefore may not be the best for agents, but I thought it was interesting and someone out there might have a good use for it.

I will try to add more blogs as I find more information.  Anyone who also knows of some good places to check out, please comment.

Thanks for reading my Blog,

Keith