Recently described as a "necessity" and an "essential part of a property marketing plan" by real estate gurus, virtual tours are becoming increasingly common among the tech-savvy real estate agents and an expected service by home sellers listing their homes with them. They include 360- and 180-degree panoramic tours and room-by-room slide shows featuring the amenities of the homes, accompanied by narrative text and/or audio.
Whether looking for a new home across town or across the country, home buyers appreciate the visual images and details about the homes for sale. But what about the communities and neighborhoods --wouldn't a tour of the area 'complete the picture' for them?
Community Tours is one component of the VisualTour system, which allows real estate agents to create a tour of up to 50 images (still or panoramic), unlimited text on every image and a voice message for the communities and neighborhoods they serve. These tours can supplement a listing or be posted on an agent's web site to provide important content for any home buyer considering a move to a new community. The cost is only $25.00 per tour.
Steve Jarrell, President and CEO of VisualTour, notes, "Since they can take a large number of photos, in addition to photos of the listing, they can include neighborhood shots, the park down the street, the clubhouse, or anything else they feel might be of interest. Agents use their sales skills to create a "tour by proxy" and show the potential buyers everything they would show them if they were giving the tour in person.... They can also create neighborhood tours instead of just tours of listings."
If a virtual tour of a home could entice a buyer to call an agent to arrange a showing, what about the effect of a community tour? Since real estate agents routinely use digital cameras, desktop and laptop computers in their work, how much effort would there be to gathering photos of landmarks, recreational areas, schools, "main street", office complexes, industrial parks and retail shopping districts, and neighborhoods that are popular or desirable?
What if the area you serve is known as a resort or vacation home area, or nature retreat? Imagine a tour featuring the beauty and appeal of the area - the red rocks of Sedona, the lush green mountains in Asheville, wine country in Northern California, the beach and shells of Sanibel Island or the seaside charm and beauty of New England's treasure, Cape Cod in Massachusetts!
With those questions in mind, I asked VisualTour to let me experiment with their product to build a small, sample tour of Cape Cod. The software, which comes on a cd-rom, is fairly user-friendly, requiring some trial-and-error dry runs before you get the techniques down.
Two guides help you - the VisualTour built-in computer guide, a cartoon character in a safari hat, which uses menu-driven, step-by-step instructions, and a real, live trainer who spends the time on the telephone to teach you the ins and outs. The real, live trainer is the real value to their program. The interaction helps you learn faster and easier.
Using some of my stock photos, already stored in a digital format, I called and arranged to get help building a sample Community Tour for this article. Matt Weinrich, a trainer with VisualTour, was the friendly, patient voice at the other end of the telephone line. In about 40 minutes of time I had enough information to get started and, in my mind, "be dangerous".
It took about half a day to get comfortable with the software and to build the sample tour. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I could complete the whole process, including posting it to their web server, and if I chose to take it down and "tweak" it again, there was no cost, as long as I did it within three days. That feature takes some of the fear out of making a mistake while learning and I now think I could put together a tour in an hour or so (exclusive of time needed to take photos).
Incidentally, they don't charge for any tour that is removed within three days so a Buyer's Agent could create a customized tour of homes available and, if the buyer reviews it right away, there's no charge. Community tours, on the other hand, have long-term value for home buyers so keep them on your web site.
To really test the usability of the product, I decided to make a small change in the text and used the 'edit' function of a completed tour, after logging on. It was very easy to do and it inspired me to limit the text to four lines so that viewers wouldn't have to scroll down to see additional text.
The software program allows unlimited text on each photo so you could provide a lot of detail, if needed, but I liked the ease with which someone could watch the show on 'Autoplay' and not have to use their mouse. Overall, editing was a snap and encourages agents to polish the final result.
As more and more home buyers use the Web to find their dream home, virtual tours are an absolutely necessity to save time and focus on their final selection of homes to see.
The same can be true for communities and neighborhoods - it is time for the "Buyer's Agents" - exclusive or not - to catch up with the technology and the demand from home buyers and make them a reality on their web sites.
There are no excuses anymore. If I can do it, they can do it. And home buyers will appreciate another value-added service from real estate agents that may help keep agents ahead of the competition, whether it be other agents or 'outsiders' to the industry.
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Pat Rioux
