Staging a Virtual Tour - Using Technology to Sell Your Home Faster
Given that 87% of all homebuyers use the Internet to start their home search, including a virtual tour of your house in your online listing is a smart house selling idea that may raise your home above the rest of the pack. A virtual tour uses 360-degree pictures to give Internet buyers a chance to walk through your home without actually setting foot on the property. Here are a few tips and hints you can use to sell your house with a virtual tour.
Three Ways to Order a Virtual Tour
- Hire a full service professional
- Do It Yourself (DIY) shoot and professional upload
- Full DIY virtual tour
If you are not comfortable with technology and are not confident with your camera skills, hiring a professional to make a virtual tour may be the best option for you. Generally, you will be present in your home during the shoot to approve images, and you can provide details about the house for the script.
If you have a decent digital camera, you may want to photograph your home and then pass off the image files to a professional who will create the virtual tour using your pictures. On the plus side, you save on photography costs. However, the professional service you select to make your virtual tour may have specific technical requirements for the images.
The full DIY virtual tour is for the FSBO purist. Find software that allows you to create a virtual tour and take care of the uploading yourself. You get total control over the process at the cost of your time.
How Many Spins Should You Order?
Spins are the 360-degree images that make a virtual tour. In most online real estate tours, the image pans slowly around an axis so that a buyer may view the home as if he or she was standing in the center of the room.
If you are trying to sell a house with a virtual tour, you should include at least two spins. These spins should highlight the two best areas of your home. If you have a larger home, order between four and eight spins so that a virtual visitor has a good sense of your home. Virtual tours of upscale homes should use at least eight spins and may easily include up to a dozen panoramic images.
Staging the Virtual Tour
When you stage a virtual tour of your house, you are trying to create a natural flow of images that guides visitors through your home. Each image logically connects to the next. For example, if your first image displays the kitchen and part of the living room, your next image might move visitors to the unseen portion of the living room.
Audio or scrolling text scripts added to a virtual tour gives you another tool to convince buyers that your house is the right home for them.
Closing the Deal
Once you make a virtual tour, remember to provide a link to the hosting site to local real estate webpages. If you have gone the DIY route, you could set up your own website and host the virtual tour yourself. To drive more traffic to your listing you might want to post links to your virtual tour from social websites.
Good luck!