Should I Pay For Professional Photos & Virtual Tour

no you can buy a decent camera and some basic software to do the same thing.  It pays for it's self in just a few times..

There are several programs available where you can create your own virtual tours.  I would never pay for one again.  Big fat waste when the software and the quality are better when doing it myself.

visualtour.com is $29.95 a month for unlimited tours.  Very easy software to use.  I've used it for about 5-6 years now.

Greg,

72 dpi is the maximum quality that will appear on the internet.  Therefore, professional photography nets you nothing unless you have a problem editing pictures.  We use Adobe Photoshop Elements which does a fine job of cropping and maximizing the pictures' effects.  Also, we upload our pictures on Visualtour.com which is very user friendly.  Don't waste your money on gallery quality photography.

I find it amusing that Realtors are the first to tell an FSBO seller how they should use a professional to market and sell their home.  You CAN do it yourself, but you won't do it as well, as quickly, or possibly as cheaply, simply because you have little or no experience.  Realtors buy and sell homes everyday and have the proper tools to market and sell your home quickly for the best possible price.  Realtors are professionals and worth that 5-6% commission!

Yet, when it comes to photography, virtual tours or websites, many realtors are willing to dive into an area they know little or nothing about just to save a buck.  

90% of realtor's websites are completely ineffective, and generate little or no business.  Most look just like every one of their competitor's websites because they ARE the same - just the 'green' theme with a boy picture instead of a girl picture. There is no content of value, and nobody can find your website because it's not optimized properly for the search engines.  Having a website that works is not the same as having a website.

Most 'do it yourself" virtual tours are dismal at best, usually because the agent doesn't take the time to properly photograph the house, doesn't have the time or the knowledge to FIX the photos so they are cropped properly and exposures, sharpening and colors adjusted to make the photo look the best that it can.  In short, just because you own a digital camera and can push a button doth not make you a photographer.  Putting lousy photos into a 'cheap virtual tour' program make a lousy virtual tour!   If I had a dime for every real estate photo I see with a house sliding down the lawn, I'd be rich. I mean taking a LEVEL photo is pretty basic stuff, yet literally 75% of all photos I see online aren't even straight!  Forget the quality.  Forget the fact that most people don't have a wide angle lens - a photos of the window in the corner of the bedroom isn't going to sell your house! And those sub-par photos are the pictures that make up your 'cheap' virtual tour.  Garbage in, garbage out.

Your website and your photography is the FIRST thing a potential buyers sees.  First impressions are everything, and you need to strive to make it the best it can be. 

If you want to be an average realtor, you can sell real estate, learn how to create, optimize and market your website, learn how to photograph, touch up and present photos and virtual tours, learn how to stage a home, or you can use professionals so you can do what you [theoretically] do best and can make the most money from - SELLING REAL ESTATE.

 

 

 

We use a professional to do our virtual tours.  When they are loaded onto the MLS, we move pictures from the tour to our photos.  We sell houses and to have a really good virtual is important.  We don't have the time to do it right.  The person we use doesn't take any new business because he is so busy.  He does tours for some of the top agents in our area.  This is a big selling point for new listings.  We tell them we have a professional come in and do the virtual.  It really shows when you compare our tours to some that are done by the agent.  I'm not saying all agent done tours look bad I just know that some I have seen could be better.  I am all for letting the people do what they do best.

ABSOLUTELY NOT!  Check out this website where you can create your own agent website for FREE! 

http://nls.point2.com/

It is completely FREE to join and there is no catch!  There are different plans, Standard (FREE which is what I have), Professional ($49,95 a month which is what I am considering upgrading to that offers a little more features), and Premium (A LOT per month and is probably good if you had your own brokerage)!

The site allows you to post your own pictures for your properties (up to 15 if you are a Standard member) and will also create a FREE virutal tour for you! 

I have had my site for not even 2 months now and already have gotten 2 buyers that will be closing in the next 30 days!  NOT BAD FOR A FREE SITE!

Check mine out if you want to see what you can do as a STANDARD member!
http://www.isellmdhomes.com

And please feel free to contact me if you have questions about it!

Greg - I did a post on this last week on my blog.  Check it out.  I always do a virtual tour if feasible, because buyers love it, and my sellers love it.  They can be done cheaply by yourself, and I just do not trust anyone else taking pictures.  Who knows what you are going to get, and you are already there anyway getting paperwork done.  Might as well show your seller that you are working.

Greg,

We use justsnooping.com to post virtual tours, they are very user friendly and very afordable. I have an assistant who has become an expert at these.  Check them out on our site at www.carsonvalleyland.com.  The other key we found is good equiptment.  Good cameras with adequate lens and filter attachments - especially a great wide angle lens! 

The real beauty of being in control is being flexile.  Longer marketing times may mean you need to change photos.  Nothing is worse thatn a dismal winter photo in the middle of July!  We do a lot of new construction.  being able to change and replace photos as a home is finished is also a nice feature.

Good Luck!

Hi all, I am new to the Active Rain community. This is in fact my 1st post. I work in the Central New York region. When it comes to true Virtual Tours, I don't think that agents (on average) have the capacity to shoot them and they certainly don't have the time. I am a Realtor, and I am a Luxury Home Agent and in process of my International Credentials. I also own and operate a few other businesses including a Virtual Tour Company called InFocus360 (InFocus360.com) recently launched. True Virtual Tour Companies offer not a place for you to upload a bunch of still images. They provide you a back office to manage your tours, add significant information about the property, provide different formats for the tours, links to the tours that can be easily emailed, and the tours should always provide 360 images, still images, and options for video (which is quickly on the rise). I could, having learned the process, taken the photos, 360's and the videos myself, but why would I want to invest that time. I pay for my tours the same as everyone of my virtual tour clients and gladly do so. When I show my real estate clients the kind of professional tour InFocus360 provides, they laugh at the agents that offer them an on-line slide show with unprofessionally taken images. You are professionals and professionals provide professional services. The same is true of websites. Template sites and free sites won't give you near the response (if any) or offer the 1st impression a professionally developed website can provide to prospective clients. I have an SEO Company as well, I can tell you for a fact that template sites and free sites will not provide you the services and responses you expect and need. I have a degree in computer sciences and have developed loan origination software for banks and credit unions. Though experienced in programming, I choose not to develop my own websites, I chose to pay a developer to build my sites, which are currently in process. Do it right or don't do it at all because 2nd rate products are easily recognized by your prospective clients. If they think for a second that you are not willing to provide them the very best, they may look elsewhere for an agent.

Image building, branding, and the finest service an agent can provide is what sets the successful agents apart from the rest of the pack. When you offer what others do not, then you are the go to agent. However, you must have the rest of your ducks lined up because if you don't price them right and learn how to negotiate the buyers and sellers you'll be wasting your money on the websites, tours and other ancillary offerings to your clients.

Hi Greg, I agree with all of that. That said, we are in an age of technology. It's about what the buyers and sellers want. You are correct, properties sell without the tours. However, I have sold (personally) two properties this year to out of town clients before they saw the properties first hand because of the extensive photographing of the properties and the 360 images. They had their agents look at the homes and report back that what they saw is what they would get. Tours create additional responses we may not otherwise get. The 1st time they saw the properties was at the home inspections. Now this is unusual, and I don't use this as an example for using tours. In the Western and the Southern markets, you pretty much have to offer a tour to get a listing. This will migrate into the other markets over the coming years. I remember when agents complained about the MLS's becoming web driven, and having to take photos at all. There was a time when we thought the world was flat, when we thought the earth was the center of the universe, and so on. Tours are useful in many ways to the prospective buyers because they capture the clients for a longer period of time which may reflect in an appointment with an agent that has yet to meet them. That agent will likely sell them something. It gets people to call us. It also is a great listing tool. In the end you are correct, but if we look at the two extremes, agents that don't use technology and agents that do use technology, I am sure that you will find the techy agents do a lot more business on average. We could lose all technology and revert back to the old index card system. If that is all any agent had to work with, homes would still sell. If we want to profess we are the best, we should provide the best. In the end, it's what the client wants. Sometimes they don't know they want it until you provide it or offer it. I agree with your thoughts on expense as well. Your example, an $80k house, we are fortunate here to have 7% as an average commission. On these inexpensive homes I still do tours. The retail price for 20 stills and 10 "360" images with InFocus360 is $130. Very reasonable. But I have to tell you, I don't often take listings under $100k. And the under $100k market may not be the right vehicle for tours. Budgets need to be followed in our business, but I look at expense against earnings on a quarterly and annual basis, not a home by home basis. This way I can provide the majority of service equally across the board to all of my clients. We are simple marketers and closers in a grander scheme of the national and international markets. We provide one or two of the many cogs for a transaction. All of us want to be able to out do another and capture more listings and buyers. This will never stop, if you ask a buyer if they prefer virtual tours they will likely say yes, as will the sellers. The question then is whether we as agents are willing to step up and make this a standard in our business. Tours are not on the downward slide, they are gaining momentum. Chips used in the space shuttles 10 years ago were starting to be used in personal computers 5 years ago and in children's toys this past year. This is the progression of technology, we either embrace it, or not.

Ben:  All one needs to do is spend 10 minutes looking at MLS photos in any area of the country you wish, and you will quickly see that the answer to "is it really hard to take your own photos" is .......YES.  Evidently.  Or you wouldn't see such horrible, blurry, crooked photos of windows, corners and furniture.  It's the norm, not the exception.