All the rage right now in Internet marketing for Real Estate is the "Vitual Tour." You've no doubt seen them on various Real Estate sites: where there's a window with a slowly-panning image that gives you a 360-degree view of the rooms for a listing.
Well, the whole idea of a Virtual Tour is a very polarizing topic among Real Estate agents. And to be honest, there's good and bad to be considered when requesting a Virtual Tour for selling your house.
The Good
- A Virtual Tour can get a prospective buyer to spend more time looking at your house for sale. They're interesting, engaging, and can give the buyer a 'feel' for the interior spaces.
- Virtual Tours are ideal for properties with unique, high-dollar features. Like a pond, riverfront, or dock. Simply stated: there's no better way to show off those kinds of features on the Internet.
The Bad
- The file sizes associated with Virtual Tours are typically large. Depending on the system used to create the Virtual Tour, it can take minutes for each tour to load! By then, the potential buyer is bored, and has probably moved on to look at pictures of another listing. That's bad!
- Virtual Tours - well, they look goofy for rooms in an average size-house. You can actually get dizzy watching a 360-degree tour of a 10x12' bedroom. An average-size living room is very much the same. Now a big house, with a large, sweeping staircase at the entry is a different story. But you get the idea. Kellie and I pretty much draw the line at 2500 sq ft as the minimum for a Virtual Tour candidate. Of course this varies: each house is unique!
- Computer compatibility. We can never know what kind of computer the potential buyer is using. Windows, Macintosh, and Linux computers all have different requirements. Even then, we can't be sure of which Browser software is being used: Internet Explorer, FireFox, and others are now in common use. And there's nothing worse than counting on a Virtual Tour to show your property... and end up with NOTHING for the buyer to see!
- Security issues. And this is a really sticky point... but fact is, a Virtual Tour will give a comprehensive, 360-degree view of important rooms in your home. Do you really want the world to know what kind of stereo you have, where it's located, and where the nearby windows are? Probably not. Before Kellie and I shoot a Virtual Tour, we work with sellers to 'stage' the house, to show it at its best. And all expensive (and theft-attractive) items like stereos are disconnected and put into storage. That makes the house look bigger too. Common sense says that when you put your home on the market, all theft-attractive things be removed. Gun collections, musical instruments, rare or fine art and sculptures... you get the idea.
Kellie and I have settled on a Virtual Tour system that is compatible with all current computer systems, and all current browsers. It also produces small files that load quickly - fast enough even for those buyers with slow 'dial-up' modems. And believe me: we tested more than a dozen before settling on one good enough to put our name on!
In the next few weeks, we'll be listing a high-end home, and featuring Virtual Tour images of that home. Check our website at http://www.previewhomepro.com to see what we can do. It'll be worth it. A stunning home, that one.
Comments(7)