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Three Tips to Spice up Your Virtual Tours

Real estate virtual tours have come a long way—from a cool and innovative feature for a select few listings, to a routine and almost expected part of any property marketing. Whether you’re a real estate agent looking to draw more attention to your listings, or a virtual tour provider looking for ways to provide your clients with better value, you need to add a little extra to your virtual tours to help them stand out.

These tips will help you create virtual tours for real estate and business properties that will engage your viewers and put the “wow” factor back in these powerful marketing tools.

Use more pictures
It seems like a simple solution, but adding more pictures with higher quality to your virtual tours can really help them stand out. If you don’t already, use a digital camera to take pictures of your properties instead of a cell phone, and set the resolution high. Take a lot more pictures than you’ll use, and choose the best shots to include in the virtual tour.

In addition, include a greater number of photos in your virtual tour. Don’t forget to use images of the property around the house or building, as well as the surrounding community and cityscapes where appropriate.

Create a video virtual tour
Video virtual tours have been growing in popularity over the past few years. Filming a video tour of the property lets you convey the flow of a home as well as the look and feel, and helps to highlight the visual appeal of the best selling points.

Walk-through video tours can be accompanied with narration to offer more detail for prospective buyers. You may even consider using a rolling tripod to film smooth, seamless video of your properties.

Include an interactive floor plan
A floor plan is a great way to show prospective buyers exactly what they can expect from a property. Interactive floor plans, such as those you can create with RTV software, allow viewers to click on a room or area, and jump directly to the relevant photos or video in the virtual tour.

You can also include a “floor plan” of the community by placing mash-up maps in your virtual tours, which show landmarks and detailed information about the area surrounding the property. Most MLS (Multiple Listing Service) suites will generate map mash-ups that can be included in virtual tours. You can also create custom maps that show information such as schools, shopping centers, restaurants, and recreation facilities using Google Maps or the “Find a Neighborhood” feature on REALTOR.com.

Team RTV

RTV, Inc
www.RealTourVision.com
Virtual Tour Software & Digital Marketing Training

 

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“Success with RTV from a Real Estate Agent’s Point of View
In early 2005 as the real estate market here in the Florida Keys started to slow, I could see I would have to brush up on my marketing skills and find better ways to expose my listings to potential buyers. With so many Florida Keys homes and condos sold as vacation homes, an online presence with great photos and virtual tours becomes essential. A few years earlier I was the first agent in our area to do virtual tours. I had tried the two-shot version but the results were not very good. Then the market got so hot, and properties were selling so fast, there was no real need to have tours. I could see the tide turning and I wanted to add virtual tours back to my listings so I started doing some research to find the best solution. After looking at a lot of low quality tours, I found RTV. Having taken some photography courses in college, and with over 30 years in the real estate business taking photos of houses, I decided to do the tours myself. My first RTV tour was of one of the highest priced homes in Key Largo. Shortly after submitting it, I received a call from a buyer who said his wife had seen a virtual tour on the Internet and she wanted him to take a look at the property while he was in the Keys. During the showing he called his wife at home and told her to look at the virtual tour again. They decided then and there to make an offer. They ended up buying the property. The wife never came to see it until closing. The selling price was $3.7 million.

Since then there have been other situations where a buyer’s partner or family member could not be present but the decision to go forward was based on the virtual tour. Many times in the course of showing one of my listings with an agent from another company, I hear the buyers talking about having seen the virtual tour on the Internet. It seems they find the listings and have their agent make the appointment which results in more showings and sales for my sellers. I have a contract pending on a property which is scheduled to close later this month. The buyers have never been inside the house. Asking price almost $3 million.

In spite of our market being down almost 50% in the number of sales, and the inventory being up almost 50% in the number of listings, this has been my best year ever in real estate with over $12 million in sales so far – and it is only April. Thank you RTV for helping take my career to a new level.”

Sharon Nyman

Virtual Tour Provider

Feature List

  • 100% Your Brand & White Label
  • Advanced Customer Storefront
  • Advanced Photo & 4K Streaming Video Delivery
  • Automated Weekly Traffic Reports
  • Built-in 360 Virtual Tour Software
  • Calendar Integration & Job Scheduling System
  • Create Interactive Floor Plans with Hot Spots
  • Custom 360 Virtual Tour Layouts
  • Discounted Virtual Staging Services
  • Easy-to-Use Secure Client Portal
  • Invoice, Prepay, & Pay-To-Download
  • Jobs from RTV’s National Hotel Accounts
  • Photographer Management System
  • Secure HTTPS Links
  • Six Elegant Property Website Layouts
  • Stripe, PayPal, Square, & QuickBooks Integration
  • Unlimited Hosting
  • Unlimited Phone Training & Technical Support
  • Works with ANY 3D–360 Camera
  • Zillow, Matterport, & iGuide Compatible

“RTV, Best Service, Great Products!!!
We opened Photos Sell, real estate photography in January 2015. I found RTV during a search for a portal site so I could send high res images over the internet to my customers. When I called this company I was greeted by the owner himself. Jason LaVanture. Jason explained what RTV was about and what they can do for my new business. Great customer service, training, high res Virtual Tours and much, much more. After I signed up I got all of the above and much, much more. I received excellent training on the system. Instant help from customer support almost never got a voice mail and when I did they always got right back to me ASAP. The product is like nothing else, it set me apart from my competition. Look if your pictures are not good, they will no look good on any medium. I now work for 35 agents and exclusive with two large Brokers in our area. I am busy as hell. I read the complaints on this company and my response to those who complained is: you can’t make a living off the leads you get for RTV. You need to market you self, have a great product and provide great customer service. Look, I am no one special to RTV, just a customer and I have received outstanding service, their web portal works flawlessly and is easy to use and navigate. I can pickup the phone and speak to the Owner any time, he is a great resource and can be depended upon should you have a problem!! Thank you RTV. I prefer not be anonymizes: George Pulizzano, Photos Sell, Tampa, Florida.”

George Pulizzano

George Pulizzano Photography

“I became a RTV Full Service Provider after I researched many different virtual tour software solutions and purchased several different packages from virtual tour companies in the industry. RTV wins hands down! Their tours are truly INTERACTIVE and professional quality. Unlike other software that can distort images and give the ‘fishbowl’ effect, RTV offers a superior software solution that forgives even the most amateur of photographers and allows professional photographers to REALLY show off their work. In the last year my company has produced more than 170 tours for both commercial and real estate applications and that number is growing daily. On top of our own marketing efforts, RTV has sent us MANY qualified leads! 95% of all the leads that they send us result in an immediate order! To top the cake, their support staff is ON THE BALL!! A BIG thank you to Torie, Jon, Jacque (tour track), Ben and especially Jason for all of their training, support and attention to detail. I have been known to be a little ‘fiery’ and passionate about my business, but they have always answered my support requests promptly and professionally! I highly recommend their software to anyone who is even considering doing their own tours in-house OR starting a virtual tour company. You simply CANNOT beat the level of support or quality of software.”

Cheryl Waller

Virtual Tour Provider

“Success with RTV from a Real Estate Agent’s Point of View
In early 2005 as the real estate market here in the Florida Keys started to slow, I could see I would have to brush up on my marketing skills and find better ways to expose my listings to potential buyers. With so many Florida Keys homes and condos sold as vacation homes, an online presence with great photos and virtual tours becomes essential. A few years earlier I was the first agent in our area to do virtual tours. I had tried the two-shot version but the results were not very good. Then the market got so hot, and properties were selling so fast, there was no real need to have tours. I could see the tide turning and I wanted to add virtual tours back to my listings so I started doing some research to find the best solution. After looking at a lot of low quality tours, I found RTV. Having taken some photography courses in college, and with over 30 years in the real estate business taking photos of houses, I decided to do the tours myself. My first RTV tour was of one of the highest priced homes in Key Largo. Shortly after submitting it, I received a call from a buyer who said his wife had seen a virtual tour on the Internet and she wanted him to take a look at the property while he was in the Keys. During the showing he called his wife at home and told her to look at the virtual tour again. They decided then and there to make an offer. They ended up buying the property. The wife never came to see it until closing. The selling price was $3.7 million.

Since then there have been other situations where a buyer’s partner or family member could not be present but the decision to go forward was based on the virtual tour. Many times in the course of showing one of my listings with an agent from another company, I hear the buyers talking about having seen the virtual tour on the Internet. It seems they find the listings and have their agent make the appointment which results in more showings and sales for my sellers. I have a contract pending on a property which is scheduled to close later this month. The buyers have never been inside the house. Asking price almost $3 million.

In spite of our market being down almost 50% in the number of sales, and the inventory being up almost 50% in the number of listings, this has been my best year ever in real estate with over $12 million in sales so far – and it is only April. Thank you RTV for helping take my career to a new level.”

Sharon Nyman

Virtual Tour Provider