Virtual Tours and Beyond

[ejourney]

I am new to the forum, but definitely not new to the real estate industry, especially when it comes to "marketing ideas."

As 360 degree virtual tours are becoming more popular, a lot of virtual tour providers have been entering the market. The growth in virtual tour providers has increased nearly hand-in-hand with the growth of real estate agents. With most listings now employing some element of a visual walkthrough, taking virtual tours to the next level is going to differentiate properties and really create value for sellers in this increasingly "buyers" market.

We have worked hard over the years not only to master our virtual tour technology, but to develop complimentary services that we believe expand upon the visual experience.

AUDIO is one technique that can really engage a buyer. Integrating audio onto your tours that explain the history or uniqueness of the property is like multiplying your agents and sending them throughout the web and all over the internet. eJourney Virtual Tours can integrate music, audio narrations, audio biographies/resumes for agents and more!

CD's are another technique that can really differentiate a listing. Including a single or multiple listings onto a CD is a great tool for not only showing your current properties but also showing past properties to further articulate to sellers and buyers that you have the experience in this industry to best serve their needs. eJourney Virtual Tours can create customized CD's and labels that match your personal style. Our best selling CD is the "business card" CD which is the same size as a standard, paper business card. The CD label asks just as a regular bcard, but the CD can contain your bio/resume, multiple tours and much more!

Are you a developer, or an agent responsible for selling multiple properties in a relatively close location or community? Interactive maps are a great tool for showcasing multiple properties. eJourney Virtual Tours can create an interactive map that links to virtual tours of your properties. In the end, you have a Virtual Community that you can burn to a CD and send to prospective buyers or showcase to sellers to help gain more listings.

These are just a few marketing ideas that can be derived from the products of eJourney 360. If you have any ideas or questions about how we can help make you a more successful sales person, please let us know.

Thank you for you time.

Josh,
eJourney 360 Virtual Tours

[els]

I just wanted to add that my parents just sold their home and their agent used a 90 degree camera. He took 2 different shots and put them together, it looked awful.

Anyway, we are going to be selling our home soon and I don't think I would use that agent. It just makes the agent look like they use less-than-great equiptment.

Evy
ELS Virtual Solutions

[ejourney]

That is why a full 360 degree stitch is the way to go as far as creating a perceptively seamless image.

[Thesa]

The only 360 tour available here is expensive - lacks experience and is only available on a limited basis due to location. Many of us have gone to visualtours instead - some agents are very good at making these look great - but others.... well they need some major work.

[Chief Tutor]

I don't normally mention something I have not used myself, but I like the concept and think it is something to look into further.

Preview First uses pictures to create virtual tours and so the cost is cheap. check them out at previewfirst.com.

If anybody uses them, let me know. I am curious to know about your experience.

Chief

[ejourney]

The only 360 tour available here is expensive - lacks experience and is only available on a limited basis due to location. Many of us have gone to visualtours instead - some agents are very good at making these look great - but others.... well they need some major work.

Well, it is not often that we have the opportunity to visit the great NorthWest, so if you ever need a batch of tours done or want to shoot a high quality tour (with audio , CD's the whole 9 yards...) for a high-end client, developer, or community then let us know and we would be glad to come out there to do some tours.

We have travelled quite extensively to shoot tours in the past, so we have experience working out a setup that can fit both your needs and budget.

Josh,
eJourney

[HHI Golf Guy]

What you need to ask yourself is, "Do virtual tours help sell homes?" Better yet, ask you buyer clients and the buyer clients of other agents in your office.

If the answer is "Yes" then you need to decide what kind of investment you want to make. You can hire someone to do your VT's. Some of these companies stitch regular photos together to make VT's (marginal quality), while a local company in your area may go out and shoot photos the "correct" way.

What is the correct way? Using a tripod and a pano head. Of course, you can invest in your own pano head to mount on your tripod and make your own virtual tours. Like anything else, there is a wid range of prices for pano head - $150 to over $1,500.

While buying a $500 pano head might seem like a lot of money, if someone is charging you $50 a pop for a VT and you have 3-5 (or more) of your own listings every year, you may want to make that investment.

Besides, in the next 3-5 years I think that your going to see a lot more Flash video being used for presenting real estate listings. It's already showing up everywhere from ESPN.com to ads on Yahoo. Video is the next marketing trend for the web.

[r_port2000]

What you need to ask yourself is, "Do virtual tours help sell homes?" Better yet, ask you buyer clients and the buyer clients of other agents in your office.

If the answer is "Yes" then you need to decide what kind of investment you want to make. You can hire someone to do your VT's. Some of these companies stitch regular photos together to make VT's (marginal quality), while a local company in your area may go out and shoot photos the "correct" way.

What is the correct way? Using a tripod and a pano head. Of course, you can invest in your own pano head to mount on your tripod and make your own virtual tours. Like anything else, there is a wid range of prices for pano head - $150 to over $1,500.

While buying a $500 pano head might seem like a lot of money, if someone is charging you $50 a pop for a VT and you have 3-5 (or more) of your own listings every year, you may want to make that investment.

Besides, in the next 3-5 years I think that your going to see a lot more Flash video being used for presenting real estate listings. It's already showing up everywhere from ESPN.com to ads on Yahoo. Video is the next marketing trend for the web.

HHI golf guy,

I completely disagree with your statement. My main work is marketing and condo development. Even using a pano head you are still looking at extremely poor quality stitching with warped views and no features at all. not to mention the time and effort for one to get to the skill level of rendering tours.

Now the use of flash video is becoming more prevalent. However, the cost is still extremely expensive compared to the use and ease of a virtual tour. By extremely expensive i mean thousands of dollars per individual flash project with extreme measures to make changes. Even though video is starting to be used more on the web, it is by no means a trend due to the high cost of development and overhead involved. Please do your research before you make comments.

It seems as though you are making virtual tours to be irrevelant and wastful in the real estate marketing world.

Rich

[Thesa]

I would not have the virutal tour comapny here create anything for me... nothing seems to be in prespective and they charge almost $100 for 3 views.... I can create my own that look pretty darn good and give the numerous out of town buyers we work with a good idea of the property. All this for $29.95 a month.... with a $199.00 one time set up fee.. and great customer service.... some of these tours were not my listings but taken for buyers that were out of town... http://www.visualtour.com/inventory.asp?u=76232

[HHI Golf Guy]

HHI golf guy,

I completely disagree with your statement. My main work is marketing and condo development. Even using a pano head you are still looking at extremely poor quality stitching with warped views and no features at all. not to mention the time and effort for one to get to the skill level of rendering tours.

Now the use of flash video is becoming more prevalent. However, the cost is still extremely expensive compared to the use and ease of a virtual tour. By extremely expensive i mean thousands of dollars per individual flash project with extreme measures to make changes. Even though video is starting to be used more on the web, it is by no means a trend due to the high cost of development and overhead involved. Please do your research before you make comments.

It seems as though you are making virtual tours to be irrevelant and wastful in the real estate marketing world.

Rich

It's OK to disagree - we each have our own experiences to fall back on.

But it does depend upon the quality of your pano head and tripod. A good pano head will rotate the camera around a single axis and keep the edges clean. Of course, if your tripod doesn't lock down properly your screwed.

I have already invested in Flash and do my own videos. For those that don't want to invest the $$$ in Flash, try using Swish (http://www.swishzone.com/). It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Flash, but it is a great product - and a heck of a lot cheaper than Flash.

[r_port2000]

I would not have the virutal tour comapny here create anything for me... nothing seems to be in prespective and they charge almost $100 for 3 views.... I can create my own that look pretty darn good and give the numerous out of town buyers we work with a good idea of the property. All this for $29.95 a month.... with a $199.00 one time set up fee.. and great customer service.... some of these tours were not my listings but taken for buyers that were out of town...


Hi Thesa,

First off, I think that you are comparing apples and oranges. I went ahead and looked at the ejourney site and looked at the virtual tours. I also followed your link and looked at a few tours that you suggested.

I believe that what you are showing is not a true virtual tour. It is simply a Picture Slideshow from the 3 that I looked at. One tour however had 3 pictures that panned about 90 – 100 degrees. Still this is not a virtual tour. I believe that those pictures were panoramic pictures that you can hover over. It still looked like a flat picture though.

Since you are trying to sell your service, I figured I would check and see what their tour would cost me. I went to ejourney360 and made a request for a general price for a tour. This is what I asked for. One tour for a total of six (6) spins and four (4) pictures. This was their response. Which was in about an hour.

First four (4) spins = $99.00
Each addtl spin = $19.00 x 2


Each tour includes 12 months of hosting and maintenance.
Also, each tour is linkable to the MLS and is compatible with mostly any website (vrbo.com, realtor.com, etc)
Each tour comes with linking instructions for the most common of these sites. The tour comes in different formats. An example would be an additional Unix tour. I’m not sure what that is but if its ever needed I will have it.
Custom hotspots connectivity. This allows one to flow through the tour room to room. Also has the Spin list available as most tours do.
You can download the tour to your computer and you can also email it directly to someone from the tour.
Link to websites from inside the tour
Audio narration available upon request (extra)
Personalized tour window for realtors. Allows for direct contact of realtor/owner from the tour. Links to agent websites.
Now the total cost would be $137.00 for everything mentioned here minus audio narration. That would cost an additional $40.00

This is what you are saying. “All this for $29.95 a month.... with a $199.00 one time set up fee.”

This means that 199.00 + (29.95 x 12) = $558.40 for a slideshow for one year.

My Question is how is your tour less expensive that what the ejourney people have to offer. The product that you offer is not really the same as what they offer, not to mention that it is 3 times the amount for what I believe is a lower quality product or service. (Not sure what it is considered)

I however like the size of the pictures that you can put in your slideshows and their load time for their quality. I do want do give you credit on that. I just don’t like to see people knock down other people’s products or services. I did my research to see which was better and more cost effective and I have my opinion. You have yours and there is nothing wrong with that.

Again I hate to see people come on a site and forwarded try to sell their product by shooting down another. Especially if the product really isn’t comparable.

Rich

[Thesa]

you may very well do a great job.... however the person that does them here is not very experienced with her camera apparently - yes what we are using is more of a slide show it is limited in some aspects...

as for trying to sell it... no..... I do not represent nor do I recieve anything from them - it is simply what I use -because in my area it is better than anything else available.

as for pricing the $29.00 is for as many tours as you want or need up to 1000 - so.... your numbers make it look like you pay that per tour -

I believe a virtual tour can sell a property - I just got multiple offers site unseen via a virtual tour.... I think you are on the defensive and making a mountain out of a mole hill.

You are tooting the horn about a product that can make a difference in some of the markets we all work in, it is a great listing tool - however - you do not have control over all areas of the US - if other agents have the same issue I do - what I use is a good solution to the problem.

[Thesa]

Would you pay in excess of $150 for this?

http://media.homestore.com/mls/H5R3VDHD.htm

[r_port2000]

Thesa,

I apologise if my statement came of as aggressive. In by no means was it meant that way. When i read your previous posts, I felt that there was some sort of a attempt for a sale. I acted on defense for this other companys product as I do stand by the quality I have seen in their product. In the quote, It mentioned ease of travel for tours to be completed anywhere pending on quanity. This is a florida company and i am based in Gulf Shores AL. It was no problems for them.

Now, since you clarified the pricing, 29 is very reasonable for the picture book. As I stated previously, I still believe the picture quality of the shows you have indeed are nice.

Please dont take a wave of hostility from me as i was simply try to clarify the difference in the product.

R

[r_port2000]

I would not. If that is what you are offered in your area, I am sorry.

Josh from eJourney sent me some samples.

Those i would pay around $200 or so and be comfortable with it. Especially the one that has people in it. Very nice.

R

[Thesa]

I think virtual tours are one of my most productive tools - I do a virtual tour for almost every property and use to use the company I sent you the link to.... when they changed hands the quality became so poor that I had to find other options.

If there were a company like you seem to be that offered good quality - I would back them 110%

Thanks for the insight and the promoting a product that can make the difference in the right market.

[ejourney]

Wow, I didn't intend for so much debate and responses over my original post. While I realize there are a lot of choices (both providers and types) of virtual tours, I believe that people should choose a product that meets their needs.

Here in Florida, as I mentioned earlier, there is a lot of competition to provide virtual tours to the booming real estate market. As a result, there is also a lot of demand.

My company has chosen to carve out a very specific niche focusing on java enabled, 360 panoramic/interactive virtual tours stitched seamlessly using a pano head rotated at the nodal/axis point of the camera. Our target market is the vacation rental and homebuilder industries that re-use our tours for multiple years.

While, I think flash is a very useful tool for creating fast loading videos, the issues I have had in the past regarding flash is that a lot of our end users (think baby boomer generation) do not know how to use/install flash and get frustrated (or scared) when asked to install another piece of software on their machine. This being said, we have tried to stick to more open-source, readily available technologies (such as java).

Still I think that Flash (of which AJAX is soon replacing) can be successfully used when integrating multiple tours in environments such as a map of a development community or floor plan of a business.

Thanks for all of the comments, suggestions, opinions. I was simply suggesting what I personally see in the future of showcasing properties. I love hearing all of these different viewpoints and definitely take them into consideration when weighing the future opportunities for my company and the industry.

Josh,
eJourney

[MikeC]

We go one better. If the home is over $300k we go take digital video and then bring it back, splice it all together on win movie maker and then use a tool to convert it to DVD and burn it and make copies. Anytime someone calls or inquires, we send them a copy.

It's a lot better on thier TV AND its a full walkthru of the house.