Last Updated: 3 months
2022 is the year that the need for house buying and renting grows but the inventory of house on sale stay relatively low. Realtors are forced to compete fiercely to get and sell more houses. Listing the homes on property-listing websites is no longer uncommon for real estate marketing purposes.
Today, you can’t run a successful real estate firm without adopting more advanced and intuitive architecture visualization technologies to demonstrate your house. To take an example, having virtual tours on your website. It has become more critical to use images and virtual tours to pique the curiosity of potential homebuyers and keep them interested.
On the other hand, virtual tours allow clients to see precisely what they desire, enabling them to make better-informed purchasing decisions.
In this article, we explain:
Part 1. What Is A Virtual Tour?
Part 2. Top 3 Types of Virtual Tours in Real Estate?
Part 3. Top 5 Benefit Of Using A Virtual Tour In Real Estate?
Part 4. Top 3 Real Estate Professionals That Benefit from a Virtual Tour
Part 5. Top 4 Common Features of A Virtual Tour?
Part 6. Your Trusted Virtual Tours Outsourcing Company
Part 7. Is There A Future of Virtual Tour In Real Estate?
Part 1. What Is A Virtual Tour?
As the name implies, virtual tours are digital replicas of real-world locations constructed by a series of video or still photographs stitched together. Using this virtual tour service, you can walk about and investigate a destination without going there personally. This virtual experience is accessible through various devices, like desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and mobile phones, and allows visitors to feel like they are in their desired location or place.
Part 2. Top 3 Types of Virtual Tours in Real Estate?
There are three types of virtual tour experiences users can access.
1. The 3D virtual tour.
This type of tour is just an indication of its name, meaning that 3D models are used to create the entire tour experience. A 3D virtual tour is picked by many architects and property marketers because it is perfect for both the built and unbuilt properties. With a 3D virtual tour, the architecture visualization company will need to create a 3D model based on the floor plan and elevation you provide and render the detailed texture, material, and environment to make it vivid. It’s more like a 3D architecture animation that is rich in information and includes a 3D walkthrough or 3D flythrough to make sure all the spatial relationships between rooms and the interior/exterior material, textures, and details are shown.
2. The 360-degree virtual tour.
This type of tour is traditionally defined as a camera-based one. It allows the viewers to tour around from all angles. These virtual tours are combined with a succession of camera shots or a single 360-degree video clip. One of the many advantages of 360 virtual tours is their great accessibility and ease of construction. With this, it can be launched on any website or mobile application.
Note: While 360° virtual tours are suitable for short production cycles and low-budget projects, some clients demand a higher level of realism and interactivity. That’s where combining 360-degree virtual tours with 3D modeling and rendering services can provide a more engaging and immersive showcase of indoor and outdoor spaces. This approach can help real estate professionals better present properties to potential buyers and stand out in a competitive market.
Simple steps to integrate 3D Rendering in 360° virtual tour:
You just need to capture panoramic photos of the space and create a 3D model based on the floor plan. Then, merge the panoramic photos with the 3D model, and add textures and details for a more realistic scene. If you are not familiar with 3D modeling and rendering technology, refer to Part 6 of this article and consider outsourcing this work to us.
3. The virtual reality tour.
The architecture virtual reality one is the best way to experience a location without going there while having an immersive experience. The 3D virtual reality tours provide a level of concentration, authenticity, and user control that has never before been possible. Using a headset and the included controllers, users may enter the virtual world in 3D and explore it at their leisure. One practical advantage is it is easily launched on the web or into applications on mobile devices, desktop computers, and other devices and offers visitors a wide range of interactivity.
Part 3. Top 5 Benefit Of Using A Virtual Tour In Real Estate?
A virtual tour is not only welcomed by home buyers who are unavailable to make the trip to evaluate a commercial or residential property. Also, this digital experience can be beneficial for a real estate business in the following ways:
1. There are no restrictions or crowds.
With the Covid-19 confirmed case growing, homebuyers tend to keep social distance and reduce their visit to the property for a house inspection. It is possible that allowing a prospective buyer to tour a property digitally can increase your property’s chances of getting home buyers’ attention. Also, for the most part, virtual tours are self-contained experiences that allow visitors to focus only on what they see rather than being distracted by others or other distractions. There are no more crowds and you can see the property any time with no restrictions.
2. It helps save time.
A virtual tour might save real estate brokers a lot of time, especially for houses that are difficult to access. Let’s take one of our customers’ cases as an example: Sammy is a real estate agent, and one of his customers contact him to arrange a house visit for the next day. But, due to the severe impact the pandemic has brought, the area was locked down so Sammy had to reconfirm the unlock time and re-arrange the schedule with his client again and again. With a virtual tour, you can save a bunch of time because your high intent buyers can view 3D views of each room by clicking on the bedrooms, the kitchen, the bathroom, and so on.
3. It can turn an Imagination into reality.
You may use a virtual tour to lead potential purchasers around a property, allowing them to see what the project will look like after it is completed. Before or after the building has begun, buyers will be able to voice their opinions in the form of feedback. Also, your clients will feel more connected to a property when they can see it in 3D rather than in 2D.
4. An effective means of communication.
Through virtual tours, high intent buyers can provide feedback on any part of the property. Also, this is beneficial to the agent since you can offer feedback in real-time while remaining in the comfort of your own office. A realtor having a virtual tour adopted can make sure that their selling point and the feedback from the buyers are conveyed clearly in between, making sure the communication is effective.
5. It provides global access.
Booking property visits, showing customers around, and negotiating rates all take effort and time, especially for those moving from another city or country, or those planning a house rental for a long vacation. But with a real estate virtual tour, you don’t have to worry about the location of your prospective buyers. The digital experience makes it possible to show off homes to potential purchasers from afar.
Part 4. Top 3 Real Estate Professionals That Benefit from a Virtual Tour
Many real estate agents out there can use virtual tours to boost their sales. This digital service will grant easy access to more high intents buyers. Here are a few businesses that can benefit from a virtual tour.
1. Commercial real estate sellers
Visual content is essential for optimizing your visibility in selling and advertising commercial real estate. Virtual tours can give you an edge over the competition when trying to sell a business building, office space, or apartment complex to a property investor. This will assist convey the property’s function, the rooms of an office building, hotel, or store location in a shopping mall and convince the decision-maker that what you demonstrate is their ideal choice.
2. Residential Real estate agents
A prospective house buyer’s attention span is about eight seconds, so you must grab it quickly. If you want to stay ahead of the competition in this industry, you’ll need to use the most up-to-date digital service. High intent buyers in real estate can use virtual tour services to navigate their options. Real estate agents can show prospective buyers how the residential home is situated with its surroundings using a virtual tour.
3. Real estate website marketer
A virtual tour on your website provides customers with additional information about your company and the property it sells and your customers interact with the integrated virtual tour can reduce the bounce rate and stay more time on your website, which helps with search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Increased online content is credited by Google when customers engage and interact with it, putting you ahead of your competitors in online search inquiries and allowing you to outrank other competitors.
Part 5. Top 4 Common Features of A Virtual Tour?
As you evaluate the layout and function of your virtual tour for property listing, you will likely consider the specific features you will provide to high-intent buyers. So, here are a few features to consider for the user.
1. Virtual interactions
Occasionally, interactions are more complex than just displaying words on a user’s computer screen. Examples include unlocking animations that demonstrate certain operations or even handling objects.
2. Rotate and zoom in
The rotate and zoom-in features can be made available to the user. Often, most users want to zoom in on things that catch their attention. This will give them more access to feel more comfortable while surfing through your business.
3. Learn more by clicking here
Many tours include some form of interaction with the environment, particularly in choosing artifacts, buildings, and other structures. After selecting a particular item, details on the listings are displayed, which may come in writing or an audio narration in many cases.
4. Teleportation
These features can allow visitors to be at different locations. Although some tours are intended for a steady movement that simulates walking, the teleportation features allow users to bounce between different destinations instantly at any time of day.
Part 6. Your Trusted Virtual Tours Outsourcing Company
If you want to build a virtual tour for your real estate, you don’t need to recruit engineers and app developers since you can regularly engage a firm that does this work. There are numerous instances where working with a reputable virtual tour firm may save you both time and money. This is where we come in.
At Imagist3ds, we deliver digital solutions to businesses in various sectors including, virtual tours, 360°spin, and virtual reality tours. To get started, all you need to do is send us the project brief of your architecture sketches, architecture plan, elevation, 3D models, or reference examples. It will be tailored to meet all of your specific needs. Please get in touch with us when you’re ready.
Part 7. The Future Of Virtual Tour In Real Estate?
Virtual tours will be the norm in the real estate industry in the future. The pace is quicken since Covid-19 breaks out.
Distance and other insurmountable obstacles are no longer an issue with a virtual tour. In addition, the real estate industry can use haptic technology to replicate the sense of touch in virtual reality. This can make the walls’ texture and furnishings palpable to the prospective buyer.
Nowadays, virtual tour technology becomes more widely accepted by realtors and homeowners who have a large demand for showcasing their landscape design, commercial exterior, home renovation, and real estate listings. However, for those who have higher requirements for immersive and customization, 3D walkthrough home feature is a truly great help for them, especially for real estate agents having a demand to showcase each room virtually and immersively, with more details information and navigation available.
Prospective clients who used to require the confidence to see properties for themselves only will find virtual tours a better alternative that can also be time and energy-saving while empowering them to see the property thoroughly even remotely. In the future, prospective buyers will tend to inspect the house with a virtual tour before they contact the real estate agent for more detail.
