How to Use Virtual Home Tours to Find Buyers

What is a Virtual Home Tour and how is it different from showing up at a property and taking a tour of a house? A Virtual Home Tour is online and can be experienced from a computer, laptop, tablet, or mobile device. A prospective buyer can still view all the properties of the home with the added convenience of not setting up an appointment. People can see it whenever, wherever, and with whomever they want.

Here’s how you can use Virtual Home Tours to grow your real estate business.

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Real Estate Agent Benefits

Virtual Home Tours can be extremely beneficial to the real estate agent who wants to save a lot of time. Imagine if you were an agent and you wanted to show your client 10 potential properties. Instead of taking the time to fill up your car with gas, pick up your client, drive around town, deal with parking, and visit all 10 properties at once, you can send your client the links to the Virtual Home Tours first.

They can quickly and easily view all the properties and narrow down from the list of 10 properties to their top 3 properties–the properties they’re interested in seeing in person. Virtual Home Tours can drastically reduce the number of wasted viewings by 40% saving you a massive amount of time and energy.

Virtual Home Tour Companies

If you are the listing agent of the property, you have plenty of resources and tools available to you to make a Virtual Home Tour for your listing. There are a lot of Virtual Home Tour companies that will go to the property and take professional videos and pictures for you. There are also great apps that will allow you to create the perfect Home Tour on your own for prospective clients. Let’s explore some of the more popular options:

Matterport

One well known Virtual Home Tour company that real estate agents like to use is called Matterport.  With this system, photographers use 3D photography to create a digital version of the property that truly makes you feel like you’ve stepped in the home and are free to “walk” in and around each room. This can then be easily uploaded and published to the many popular home searching sites and agent branded websites.

You can also create the Virtual Home Tour yourself using a 360 camera and one of Matterport’s plan platforms. Pricing can range from $0 to $300+ depending on the features you need for your listing. Or, you can have them do all the work for you freeing you up to get more listings.

Zillow 3D Home

Zillow, one of the most popular sites for home searches, now has an app that you can download and use for free to create a Virtual Home Tour.  This app uses the panoramic pictures taken from your phone to automatically create your tour and supports 360 cameras as well. It is convenient and easy to use.

Once published, your Zillow 3D Home tour will appear on Zillow and Trulia. You may also share your tour to your Multiple Listing Service, social media, and other sites using a link or embed code.

3 Important Reasons to Use Virtual Home Tours

THE INTERNET

Now, more than ever, people are using the internet to search for homes and property. So it’s really important to post your listings online so people can find you and so you can have a strong online presence.

Google reported an increase of 253% on real estate related searches over the past 4 years from 2013-2017. In 2019, a consumer survey conducted by the California Association of REALTORS®, revealed that 32% of buyers found their home online, 34% with a real estate agent, and the rest with other resources that were not related to the internet.

EXPOSURE

With so many listings out there, how can you set yourself apart from the others? How do you get more exposure? Listings with Virtual Home Tours get 40% more views than those without one. Simply having a Virtual Tour added on your listing will draw more people to view it.

ENGAGEMENT

Potential clients are more likely to engage with an Agent who uses this type of technology and appears to be tech-savvy. Having your finger on the pulse of the latest technology gains confidence from buyers and may lead to more clients because of it.

Final Thoughts

With the trend of online home searches on the rise, Virtual Homes Tours are here to stay.  They are convenient, easy to use and save you an enormous amount of time and energy in the home buying process. Virtual Home Tours will lead to more clients, engaging experiences, and a greater listing reach which in turn will increase leads and revenue.