Virtual Tours and Virtual Walkthrough (Continued from Previous)

... Continued.

Virtual Tours are another great way to show off the house.  And you don’t need anything super fancy other than your camera, a tripod, and the standard video editing software on your computer.

In each room, put your camera on the tripod.  Then, while recording video and being slow, steady and smooth in your motions, turn your camera 360 degrees.  This will give the impression of standing in the middle of the room and looking around.

Then, put together a 5-10 minute video as if you where giving someone a tour of the home.  Videos longer than 5-10 minutes take too long to download and won’t keep a prospective tenant occupied.

Don’t put any speech in the video as sometimes the spoken word can be mis-heard or misinterpreted.  Instead, put plain simple easy to read text at the bottom of the image or clip.  Also some nice happy music playing in the background at low volume makes these videos easier to watch.  Choose something upbeat, but NOT repetitive or elevator music or super current like the latest pop song.  Something that will appeal to as many demographics as possible.

YouTube tends to be the best site to use to show off the video. It's easy to upload and the site will automatically adjust the video to whatever device (such as computers, cell phones, tablets) the prospective tenant is using.

A Virtual Walkthrough is also a great tool.   It allows the prospective tenant or prospective buyer look at each room online at their own speed as if they where at the home doing their own walkthrough.  They can zoom in and out to see each detail and then move to the next room when they are ready.

The drawback of a Walkthough over a Tour is this.  One, you need a special (and costly) one-shot 360 camera lens and software that can do 360 degree still images to create it.  The cheaper 360 video images tend to be jumpy and annoying to the end user.  Plus, many end users don’t realize that it is a 360 video and just watch it as a regular video.  And two, is that some clientele may have trouble figuring out how to navigate through the rooms.

Having said all this, a Virtual Walkthrough really is a terrific addition to the tour.  The best system I have found to create a walkthrough this is the 0-360 system.

If you are advertising a lot of homes, the price may be worth it.  If only one or two, it may be better to stick with the standard photos and tour.

To Be Continued...