Thread: Virtual Tours and Beyond

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

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

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

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.

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

Originally Posted by 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.

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

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.

Originally Posted by 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.

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

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

Originally Posted by r_port2000

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. 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.