Buying a House from Home By Stephanie Andre
In today’s bustling world, people are constantly looking for shortcuts, ways to get more information—faster.
With roughly three of four potential home buyers researching homes on the Internet these days before ever visiting an agent, it’s no surprise that buyers are now onto what some say could be a major player in the future of home buying and selling—the virtual tour.
More and more brokerages are catching on to this trend, enlisting companies such as VisualTour to help their Realtors create online walkthroughs of their listed properties.
Located in Coral Springs, Florida, VisualTour has been creating software and Internet back-end services for some 15 years. Now, with the housing boom of the past several years, VisualTour’s clients total more than 50,000 agents and company customers worldwide.
“I first heard about VisualTour about 10 years ago,” says Doug Whitehouse, owner of Hannett, Wilson & Whitehouse Realtors, in Birmingham, Michigan. “When we decided to join up with a virtual tour company, VisualTour was it. I had heard about the company’s great reputation and follow-up with support and training.”
Roger Herman, CEO of The Herman Group/Prudential Colorado Real Estate in Denver, says when he started The Herman Group, he wanted to give his associates all of the tools necessary to give them a competitive advantage in the marketplace—VisualTour was part of that.
One of the things Whitehouse says he appreciates the most about the company is its dedication to customer service. “There are few companies that when you call customer support, you actually get a real person on the phone and they can actually help you,” he explains. “If you call with a technological problem, they stay with you until it’s fixed.”
Jackie Medows, vice president of marketing for Century 21 Pro-Team in Oak Lawn, Illinois, agrees.
“Their training and support is great,” she says. “All of our agents are required to use VisualTour, yet we’ve never had one of them come to us with a complaint—their staff is extremely professional and knowledgeable.”
Selling a Home Site Unseen
Posting a virtual tour of a home online can net immediate interest, as well as interest from out-of-town buyers who might not normally consider a home they had not yet visited.
But, with VisualTour’s capabilities, buyers from just about anywhere can ‘walk through’ the home as if they were standing in it.
“I take my cue from consumers,” says Whitehouse. “They’ve told me that a 360-degree tour is time consuming and often doesn’t show them what they really want to see. They don’t want to see doorways, hallways and wallpaper. They want to walk through those doorways and down those hallways. It just feels natural—like you’re really there. VisualTour allows you to show what’s important.”
In fact, he says he gets a better response on properties that have multimedia imaging—“the public wants that,” Whitehouse says.
Medows says she now has buyers calling in offers on homes that they’ve only seen online.
“We are beginning to see more sells from buyers out of state that are viewing our tours online without ever stepping foot in the home,” she says.
Whitehouse says he’s also had buyers call him stating that they would like to buy a home they’ve seen on one of the tours. “They’ve said to me, ‘we haven’t seen it face to face, we saw it on your virtual tour.’ So, I took them out to the home and they said, ‘Yes, that’s what I saw. I’d like to buy it’.”
In addition, he says that he’s also created specialized tours for buyers when perhaps only one of the spouses can visit the home. He creates a tour for the other spouse and e-mails to them to view the property. “The ability to pass on a ton of information visually to someone who can’t physically see the home is really helpful to everyone involved,” Whitehouse says.
You Can Do It Yourself
Because the software has been designed to keep the Realtor in complete control of the tour, it is very simple for agents to create the tours themselves.
“Even if you are new at using the software, it takes very little time to create a quality tour,” explains Whitehouse.
For Herman, the ability to create a tour prior to getting a listing is a differentiating factor that he says helps his associates win in the marketplace.
“We like the fact that we have control over the process and we are not reliant on the tour vendor to produce the tours for us,” Herman says. “By controlling the process, we control the end product and experience for our associates.”
Sandy Green, president of Reese & Nichols in Leawood, Kansas, says the ease of use for her agents is key.
“The ease of use and ease of submitting to other Web sites [such as Realtor.com] is great,” she says. “Plus, we like that it is all controlled by our agents.”
Bruce Taylor, president of ERA Key Realty in Whitinsville, Massachusetts, says that with so many features to use, for his agents, creating a tour is simple.
“One of the features that is so attractive about this product is that you can get a tour up and running very quickly,” he says.
He adds that while the majority of his agents use the tours and create them themselves—which includes taking the photos and writing the text—for those who aren’t that tech savvy, his company provides support.
Medows says her company does the same.
“It’s important that the agents can manage the tours themselves,” she says. “But for those who can’t, we provide key staff to create those agents’ tours. What’s most important is that once a new listing comes through, VisualTour allows us the ability to get a tour up immediately, having not lost any time. That really helps.”
Keeping Up with the Competition
VisualTour’s product is making a difference, according to Medows. She says it’s keeping her company ahead of its competitors.
“There’s a definite need for all properties to have visual tours in today’s marketplace,” she says. “We’ve been getting more views on the Internet and our agents use the visual tours as a selling feature in their listing presentations. It’s kept us above our competition and we now have a stronger presence on the Web.”
Green agrees.
“I believe it has helped our offices separate themselves from the competition,” she says. “Most of our competitors do not have this application.”
What’s more, Herman says most of the leads his group receives are generated off listings with photos and virtual tours.
“By using the tool, our associates know they will be able to generate leads on their sites,” he says.
He adds that the tours also help his agents acquire listings and grow their business. Also, “it’s been a strong recruiting tool for our company,” he says.
Whitehouse says with the competition so fierce, he won’t even list a property without creating a tour for it. “Buyers want to see everything they can,” he says. “The more you can show—the better to get them to move forward with the sale.
Adds Whitehouse: “For me, from a technological standpoint, VisualTour and a personal information manager database are the two most effective tools in the trade.” |
