Do you feel that virtual tours are going to be a standard give away to properties owners that want to sell? More and more in California virtual tours are becoming necessary to keeping a listing. There are a lot of tour companies out there. Which ones do you use? vrhomes.us has been good to us.

Absolutely.

http://www.visualtour.com/ is great for now.

Here's the virtual tour of the future.
http://tinyurl.com/8z3ge

Virtual tour of the future??? Why? It's the most ordinary VT I've ever seen.

Really.

So all of yours look like this or better???

Where could we see one of your masterpieces????

I think it's an interesting virtual tour, but how can the user control the views?
Also, because I don't have speakers hooked up on the PC I'm using right now - who was that speaking on camera? The agent or the seller? Either way, it seems like using one of those two on the tour would be questionable for the following reasons...
1-if it's the agent, then it would violate our MLS policy which forbids virtual tour links or pictures from branding or promoting the agent (that would include providing the listing agent's name or face.)
2-if it's the seller, then it borders on Fair Housing standards that remind you that you can always stay out of trouble when your advertising describes and identifies the HOUSE, not the OWNER.
--A

It's not meant to be MLS photos. It's a professionally produced video done by Inman News.

I looked at this clip again and I don't see any sort of Fair Housing violations anywhere on either side of the border. I find it's helpful to potential buyers to hear and/or see the sellers tell how they've enjoyed their house and maybe their reasons for buying.

I ask my sellers to write a short paragraph or two telling potential buyers just that.

I watched the video and thought it was a little hoaky. Too much on the owner and not enough on the property.

I'm not quite convinced that a virtual tour is any better/if not worse than a showcase of still photos. Give people enough to look at online then get them inside the house that's how you sell houses. I doubt most people will be buying houses based on a virtual tour for a long time to come. Maybe never.

Virtual tours ignore a lot of details that can make or break a sale.

If it's not meant to be on the MLS how would you distribute the virtual tour?
--A

Your personal website.

A company website

e mail to prospects

Realtor.com

Yahoo real estate

URL in print ads, sign riders, etc.

I direct all my traffic to my site not MLS. Put yourself in the sellers shoes. You have several agents after your business. We used to distinguish ourselves by our hilite sheets. Virtual tours are an extension of this.

I loved the Inman virtual tour!

A serious buyer would drool over that movie several times a day...until they bought it. It whets the appetite for more. It is great marketing.

I think that buyers will look at this with different eyes than those of crusty old real estate agents like me....I don't have the time for it...but they do!

Thanks for sharing.

I like the virtual tours. I use Obeo.com and they take the pictures for me and host the tour. It's got a great Back office where you can see the number of hits on each day ... where they are coming from Realtor.com/mls/other search and they even e-mail the statistics report to you and the owner at whatever interval you select.

The information on the left is fantastic for the buyer with demographics, maps, e-mail ability, setting up showings, etc.

You can see one that I have at www.obeo.com/204739

vrhomes.us is really good too.. they take the photos for you and writeups and voice overs. it's great...

Whitney.... please admit that you are a representative of vrhomes. Acting as if you are just posting because you want to better the real estate community is tried here every day.

Honesty is respected. Attempted deceit is not.

So, Jim Lee... You just wouldn't share a virtual tour on Realtor.com and your local MLS, or you would buy two virtual tours?
--A

I know that with the obeo tour ... both come with the tour that you purchase.

Other Realtors can send it to their clients with their own information too!

Hey, I would share my virtual tours anywhere; I'm a sharing kinda guy. :p

For $29.95 a month http://www.visualtour.com/ will let you create an unlimited number of virtual tours.

We can put an unbranded (no agent contact information) on our MLS.

For an extra 20 bucks (which all goes to those nice folks at Realtor.com) you can link your visual tour to it's link on Realtor.com.

Here's 2 benefits; you get that little red spinning house icon that denotes the listing has a virtual tour, AND best of all, you get the opportunity to come up first in a search IF the consumer asks for listings with virtual tours to be displayed first.

I also have a special place on my website, "FEATURED HOMES" that display virtual tours of just my listings.

They're also all advertised with a special sign rider that says: "A Featured Home on [url=http://www.KnoxvilleMLS.com"]www.KnoxvilleMLS.com"[/url]

As one final, added benefit and at no extra charge, you can have your www.visualtour.com virtual tours displayed on Yahoo real estate, Homes.com, Homeseekers, HomePages.com, and http://www.prudentialproperties.com/ VOW .

You can also opt out of any or all of these sites.

Jim, KnoxvilleMLS is such a great name. If I am a consumer, I would expect to see homes, with lots of pictures. Why mess up the experience with your mug shot?

Nothing wrong with having your picture on a personal website but that's not the look I would expect when I go to a site named YourtownMLS.com

You could have another site like JimLee.com for your personal profile but it seems like a waste to own such a great name like KnoxvilleMLS and the first thing they see is you.

Just my opinion.

My virtual tours destroy this hoaky show and tell. I can't let you see them, it's a source of differentiation for me and I don't want my competition to catch up.

Every Realtor listing in Knoxville is there, most with lots of pictures.

Just click the "Search Homes" link and look away.

Thanks for your opinion but I've had lots of buyer and sellers tell me they liked seeing what I looked like before contacting me.

I also own www.JimLee.com along with several other URLs.

That's very interesting.

Are you saying your tours are too good for anyone to look at??? :p

What stops your competition in your area from looking at them????

I totally agree with MdHomes. I don't think that you are wrong ... they do "maybe" want to see what you look like. I think that if I were a consumer going to Knoxvillemls.com, I don't expect to see a Realtor. I want homes. What maybe you should consider is making this site completely user friendly a couple of buttons Search Homes, automatic email listings, and maybe a button what's my home worth. No Realtor at all on it except at the bottom disclosing that this is a service of Jim Lee Team or whatever.

Let the consumer use the site ... once they are ready to view it ... they'll put their hands up (form of an e-mail or request showing button) then you swoop in and save the day and give them your Realtor site Jimlee.com. Let them do some exploring when they don't feel threatened at all and they'll ask for your help when they are ready.

I'd love that name in my town ... it's already taken though!

They might look at them but they really can't duplicate them. Yet, anyways. They involve:

1) An expensive video camera that shoots well in very low light.

2) Fairly advanced web design skills.

3) Avid video editing software and plug-ins that costs several thousand dollars.

4) Knowing how to edit and use a combination of video footage, stills, animated graphics, special effects and transitions, and original music composed and performed by yours truly.

Nonetheless, I want as little exposure as possible to non-clients for obvious reasons.

I happen to know my competitors are all over this forum, including personnel from my own office.

I compete in the central northern NJ market, where there are lots of multi-million dollar homes and lots of very sharp well heeled agents. Any edge doesn't last long, so it's always a game of cat and mouse with new techniques and technologies.

Also, just because I'm paranoid does not mean that other agents are not out to get me...

navarac, what's the point of being a member of a web board if not to share?
--A

I HATE VT's .... (sorry for the shouting but i really do), I think that they were created by photographers just to get a few more bucks out of us.

The main reason is that I clicked on the VT in the 2nd post of the email and read all of the other posts and the VT has still not loaded. Do you think a buyer will wait?

and before you start i am on a 1.5mbps connection. i am in australia, but even the locally hosted VT's are slow

Anotherwards you have Adobe Premiere and an electric keyboard? Personally I don't need a low light video camera, I just flip the light switch. :p

"and original music composed and performed by yours truly"

OK Elvis, ..... Are the Christmas lights still up on your Sign Posts?

Takes one second to click off a virtual tour. Takes 15 seconds to load one tour on a high speed connection. I don't think it's a good idea despite what any VT company says.

I'm convinced, then, that it will depend on the market. A good chunk of Las Vegas buyers come from out of town. Since they can't touch or smell the property before they get here, they want as much of a portrait of the house while they are at home on the computer.
When I speak to buyers from Southern California (which makes up one of our largest buying segments), they will have knowledge of a home only if it had a virtual tour. And this means they are more likely to call the listing agent only if it has a virtual tour.

Even with local residents who are busy and have little time to physically house-hunt, the virtual tours are definitely utilized and appreciated.
--A

Wrong smartass I use Avid Xpress, basically the same program Spielberg uses to edit Schindler's List. Adobe Premiere is for amateurs. And an electric keyboard? I have a Kurzweil K2000, several synthesizers by Roland and Korg, an Ibanez Pat Metheny Signature guitar, a Lexicon MPX1 effects processor, a Mackie VLZ mixer, and lots of other gear. And guess what? It's all deductible! It's used for business purposes.

One really fun thing about being a Realtor is you can section 179 all kinds of neat AV and music production gear as a legitimate business expense.

Avid Xpress! Why didn't you say so. It's only a $1,500 program. I wondered why all of those hollywood movies cost so much to make. I like Steven Spielberg, we share the same birthday.

Now it's a $1,500 program. But before the collapse of the studio system, it was several hundred thousand and out of reach. By the way, it's much more than $1,500 with a decent suite of plug-ins for effects, titling, color correction, etc. I'm somewhere near $5,000 and I'm still shopping...

Don't you hate how quickly technology depreciates? In 1999 when I bought my desktop system I spent nearly $4,500 for all the gadgets and gizmos. Now I can't give it away! lol.

Actually the IBM PC-XT is making a comeback. 10 years ago, you couldn't give it away. Now a fully functional system is about $300 and is not all that easy to find on E-bay.

I'm thinking of putting together an all-IBM PC-XT system with a monochrome monitor and an Epson FX-80 dot matrix printer. Just for old time's sake.

From what I have heard it cost extra to attached virtuals on Realtor.com.

Yup, and actually it costs me $30 so I'd like to know if anyone is paying less!
--A

Me.

http://www.visualtour.com/Realtor/

$19.95 per listing which includes the little red spinning house icon and the ability to come up first in a property search if anyone checks the box that says: "Sort results by: Virtual Tour"

That's all I've ever paid.

I like the inman videos. They may not work for mls, but again inman isn't in the virtual tour business. As far as using avid for videos, the videos will still only be as good as the artist using the tools. It is strange you won't show off your work if your proud of it.

What do agents think of 360 tours in general, I think having a fish eye view of a room and spinning around it, kinda takes away from how the home really looks.

I'd like some agent opinions on these virtual tours:

http://closingvideos.com/storeus.htm

I won't show off my work because in northern NJ it is an extremely competitive market for higher end homes. New ideas are copied immediately. I won't give my competitors an easy look.

I personally don't like them. I guess what I don't like about VT's is that there is no orientation to where you are in the house. Most of them show a list of the rooms that have a VT with no relation to where it is in the house. When you click on bedroom and spin around and around, you still have no idea where that bedroom relates to the rest of the house. Is it in the front of the house? The back? To the left? To the right? Above the garage?

Now, that being said, there is a VT company that actually shows a layout of the house with little cameras in the corners of the room where the VT was captured. That is a little better because then I know how it's laid out as a buyer.

Just my .02

I think the biggest problem with most 360 Virtual Tours is the quality is questionable at times... the pictures are blurry often times, the pictures are distorted ALL of the time, and most importantly, human beings don't walk into a house and stand in the middle and spin around in circles like a top! They just don't! I think it's an unrealistic view of the house. I think still pictures (good quality of course) still reflect the house the best. Am now experimenting with video tours as well....

http://www.rudymayer.com/featuredprop/MaxcyFisher/PhotosSept.html

That's not really a video tour. It's a virtual tour shot with a video camera. Basically just spins and zooms. No walk-throughs, booms, pans, or motion. Bad music also. Hyper classical piano recitals are a bad choice for this type of exhibition. The lighting was also pretty bad, with a lot of backlit underexposure. It's also fairly jerky on my broadband connection. Color needed correcting and more saturation also.

I know, you are just experimenting. But much improvement is necessary before this is ready for prime time.

1) Yes, it is a first time experiment. I've never done a video tour or editing before. Just picked up the camera 48 hours ago in fact.
2) I don't think it's realistic to expect a Spielberg type of 'movie' for a real estate website. First starters, no realtor will pay the money for something like that. I've dealt with realtors for many years - trust me - they won't spend a dime more than necessary. The cost has to be reasonable. To spend thousands of dollars on equipment and dozens of hours on editing is overkill... unless you work for free. Nobody will pay for it.
3) I think the goal is to have something that represents the home fairly (from a BUYER'S perspective, not from a moviemaker's perspective), is quickly and easily put together at a reasonable price for the realtor to purchase and can be done within hours, not days or weeks.
4) Granted, the music isn't the best, but you need to use royalty free music and that's not always easy to find something that's good.
5) It's a bit jerky, but it's also a 7 minute video, which is pretty lengthy by web standards and it's done in Flash - which is why it's not as perfect as it could be. I've looked at other methods, but there are just too many compatibilty issues with .wmv, quicktime, real player, etc. Flash is universal and almost 100% of browsers have it installed. For a web based video, I think it looks pretty damn good for Flash actually. I don't think this could have even been done a year ago.

More interestingly, in viewing your recent posts, you seem to be very "good" at what you do, (according to you anyway) and you are quick to criticize many people posting in this thread.

And yet, according to you "I won't show off my work because in northern NJ it is an extremely competitive market for higher end homes. New ideas are copied immediately. I won't give my competitors an easy look.". Honestly, that's pure BS. If it's on the web, it's out there for anyone to see. If it's NOT on the web and you are producing video for DVD or CD reproduction, you're talking about a different animal altogether.

So if you've got these thousands of dollars of equipment and experience, I think you should show everyone what we should strive for, no?

Otherwise, it just comes across as arrogance. No offense.

Now, now, there, there, don't take it personally. It's not bad for a first effort. But the advantage of a video presentation is MOTION. If you're just going to stick the cam on a tripod and spin and zoom, just do a virtual tour, it has the same impact.

I'm comfortable with you calling me arrogant.

Don't worry about seeing my stuff. It's good and I spend way more time than you will ever want to because it's a hobby. But I'd rather newer Realtors attempting to integrate video shoot at the target you (and others) are presenting rather than mine. This way my edge will last a little longer.

3 years from now, all listings will have full video tours shot for $100 by virtual tour companies hiring teenagers using $75 Avid for Everybody version 1.

And then I'll be dangling out of a helicopter somewhere trying to find an angle that will diffentiate my videos from yours. And so the game goes on...

Yup. I personally dislike VTs for that reason - plus some of them are quirky - lock up my browser or don't work properly. Only thing is, sellers seem to love 'em. Many buyers seem to love 'em. I guess you gotta do what you gotta do.

I have never seen a seller get excited when I offer up a VT on his property. I think as a consumer I thought they were "ccol" when they first came out and I was home shopping. But, they are quirky and quite often a lot of trouble. For the most part I stay away from them.

RealEstateWebGuy what typoe of camera are you using?
I thought it looked very good for a rough draft. Navarac maybe right in the fact that with video you may want more motion.

I have an update to my original post. We have been using real estate shows. THESE are AWESOME.

I like them so much I've set up I've set up my own Canadian domain with the shows I've done over the past few weeks. If you want more info you can view the thread "real estate shows".

This is a bargain at $125/year. If you want it for $99./ year my promo code of Sara99 is good until the end of April.

view my shows at www.realestateshows.ca

to buy it though you have to buy it from the company at www.realestateshows.com

I do VT's on homes where it helps to sell the properties. I use CirclePix in my area. I don't know if they are just a local company, but here are some of the ones I've had them do on my listings...


http://www.circlepix.com/agent/54364


Click on 360 degree tour at the top.