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At 11:30pm eastern time recently, I received a call from the west coast. As I was just about to go to bed, I let it go to voice mail.
The next day, I listened to the message, which was from someone in California. He was a bit confused as to who he was calling, and asked if I did Video Tours for real estate,etc. Since I am in the Boston area, California is a bit out of my range, so I was just going to ignore the call. But, I did decide to call him back and see what he wanted.
He had seen my website and samples of my real estate video tours, and and was relocating to the area and wanted to see video tours of homes in the area. I explained that I was not a REALTOR, only a provider of video tours. He kept reiterating that he wanted to watch video tours of homes before he and his wife came out since they don't have the option of traveling across the country multiple times to look at homes. I explained (again), that I was not a REALTOR. He asked me to refer him to someone who did Video Tours, and I told him that I could do that, however, they don't have video tours for every home for sale in the marketplace... just some of their listings. He insisted that he wanted someone who had video tours, so I told him that I did have one client who had done Video Tours for all of his listings for the past 12-14 months... but again... they are only for HIS listings... not all listings. He said that this was fine... and I gave him his number.
Less than an hour later, I spoke to this agent. He immediately received a call from this person. His wife is a prominent doctor in Boston, and they want to move somewhere north of Boston.... within 40 minutes to the city. Oh... price range?.... $2-2.5M.
He is most likely going to create videos for any homes this client is interested in, which will be posted on the web for the client to view. This way, when they DO come out, they will know exactly what they want to see, therefore not wasting their time. Oh, and this is the second million dollar buyer that he has received within the past 4 weeks due to Video Tours.
Another interesting (and somewhat pathetic) side note.... The agent was checking all homes in the area in the $1.5-10M range to see what was on the market that he could show him. Of the 40 or so properties currently listed, guess how many had a Virtual Tour?
NONE. Nada. Not one.
This is not Realtor.com, where you have to actually pay real money to have a virtual tour. This is the New Hampshire MLS. Even more ridiculous, the MLS allows up to 12 photos. Probably 75% of these listings had five photos or less. What are these REALTORS thinking? Are you on crack? Come on... a 2+ million dollar house... and you can't even put up the allowable 12 photographs???? Digital photographs are FREE. In case you've been on vacation for the past decade, there is no cost to develop photos any more, only the time to actually take the picture. And you can't even provide twelve lousy photos?????? If I was your seller I would fire you in a heartbeat. You're not doing your job. Sorry. To me, this is mind numbing, and just proves that the problem with many REALTORS is laziness... pure and simple.
The funniest thing is, when word gets out that an agent has a million dollar buyer (which is not that common these days), every agent with a million dollar listing in the area is on the phone begging for them to show their listing.
Again, I just don't get it.....
By the way, I was interviewed last week for a feature for NPR, which will be broadcast either this week or next... Subject? Real estate video tours for marketing real estate. I guess some people think it makes sense! I will post the audio of the interview once it's aired....
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In my area the average price of a home sold in the MLS over the past 12 months is $147,000 so you can imagine we have few million dollar listings. However, we have one $1.2million listing in the MLS which the agent didn't even bother getting out of the car to take the photo.
I worked with a "high end" buyer for more than a year. They wouldn't even go look at a house unless it had fair pictures. There was one $700,000 house I had to go take photos of and send to him before he would agree to see the house. We close this week, yahoo!
I have mixed feelings about video tours. They do give a better feel of the homes layout. Virtual tours are better in that sense than "flat" photos and they offer the advantage of control to the consumer. But "flat" photos give the photographer more control over what the consumer sees and can accentuate the best side of a particular view.
A recent survey by the NAR of buyers and sellers says that the buyer finds the photos most helpful. Virtual tours are number three. I think video tours aren't on the list only because so few agents provide them.