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Creating an interactive virtual tour is a great way to showcase your business or property, share memories of past events and connect with old friends. Today we’re going to walk you through the process of creating this type of tour in 8 simple steps.
Virtual tours, such as Walk-through videos, Virtual tours in 3Ds, and 360-Degree Interactive Virtual Tours, allow potential buyers to interact with the home and examine features in greater detail without having to visit the property in person and have become the norm, alongside listing photos and floor plans. Virtual tours are used by agents to sell their properties to out-of-town buyers, reduce the amount of in-person showings, and differentiate their listings from the competition.
While virtual tours are an effective marketing tool, many brokers avoid using them since they are time-consuming and costly to create. For under $100, companies like Asteroom provide basic 3D tour equipment that allows you to create high-resolution virtual tours straight from your smartphone. The kit includes the equipment you’ll need to transform your smartphone into a 360-degree camera in 15 minutes.
The eight stages to creating a virtual tour for real estate are as follows:
1. Choose the Right Equipment & Software
Many agents avoid virtual tours because they believe they will need expensive, high-end photographic equipment. In actuality, a panoramic or 360-degree camera is required, which is now more inexpensive and user-friendly than ever. In order to create virtual tours on a regular basis, agents should consider purchasing one. Select a virtual tour software provider and inquire about their own cameras and lenses, as well as discounts on camera purchases.
Compare costs, features, resolution depth (greater is better), stabilizer options to avoid fuzzy shots, battery life, and remote control of the finest 360-degree cameras on the market. Purchase or rent a camera with the characteristics you’ll need for the sort of virtual tour you’re planning.
Pro tip: Buy a sturdy tripod with a panoramic mount. When you utilize this indispensable tool, the angles in your photographs will line up when stitched together, giving your virtual tours a more seamless appearance.
2. Make a shot list
Make a list of all the rooms in your home that you wish to show in your virtual tour. Walk through each room, locate the center, and ensure that your camera can capture and accentuate the elements of each area from that vantage point. If the center doesn’t work, mark the point with a piece of tape where your camera will take up the greatest detail. Fill up a preprinted shot list template or write down the names of each room on your shot list.
Pro Tip: To a prospective buyer, every room counts, which is why you should include bathrooms, walk-in closets, and mudrooms in your virtual tour. Make a shot list ahead of time to ensure you don’t miss anything or leave anything out.
3. Set the Scene in Each Room
Now that you know where you’re going to put the camera, make sure the room appears as good as possible. Remove anything in the way of the camera’s lens to ensure that it has a clear view of the whole room. Remove everything from the space that might make it seem cluttered or divert buyers’ attention away from the high-value aspects. The end product will be better if the vision is clear. Make sure there is adequate light in the room for the details to be seen.
4. Make sure the tripod is level
To achieve consistent photos, make sure your tripod is level. This is true for every picture, video, 360-degree, or panoramic photograph you capture. If you attempt to capture panoramic or 360-degree photographs without a level surface on which to lay your camera, the lines and angles in your shots will not be straight. If your tripod does not come with a built-in bubble level, you may use your smartphone to level it. Adjust the legs of the tripod until the bubble is centered between the lines.
5. Practice with a few shots first
Each photo on your image list should be tested to ensure that you’re accentuating the traits you want purchasers to notice. In the room, take a test shot and analyze it. Add extra lighting or make modifications to compensate if the room seems to be excessively dark.
If anything in the view distracts you, adjust the camera or arrange the things in the room properly. Keep an eye on any mirrors, glass, or windows to ensure that you and your camera do not show in the photos as a reflection. If you do, stand somewhere else while operating the camera remotely.
6. Take all of the photos in your image list with you
You’ll be ready to photograph each room in your image list after you’ve determined the proper camera settings. In each room, find the area you highlighted, set up your tripod, and snapshots. Before moving the tripod, check each picture on the camera screen, retake photographs if required, and double-check that you have all the images you need before going on to the next area. Having too many images is preferable to having too few.
7. Design a Virtual Tour
Create your virtual tour by stitching photographs together using the program you choose in the first stage after you have all of your images.
Add Images to the Software
To make your virtual tour, import your photographs into your software package. Follow the procedures to upload static or panoramic photographs when requested. For Virtual Tour in 3Ds, the program will stitch static photographs together and create panoramic shots for 360-degree tours.
Add Extra Functions
You can add features to most applications to improve the viewer’s experience. Audio descriptions, interactive links (also known as hotspots), music, and text are examples of these. Click options or the edit button, depending on your program, to see a list of additional features to add to your virtual tour. When the virtual tour is finished, viewers will be able to use their mouse to automatically back up, zoom, or change directions. Adding hotspots on the iStaging.com virtual tour maker looks like this:
Don’t Be Afraid to Hire Outside Help
Although virtual tour software vendors have simplified the process, not every agent has the skill or the time to complete the post-production process to make the best tour for the property. If that’s the case, another alternative is to hire a freelancer on Fiverr to sew your photographs together into a professional-looking finished product.
Before stitching the photographs into a virtual tour, you may use an online photo editing tool like BoxBrownie to edit images, add virtual furniture, adjust lighting, and straighten fixtures. Virtual tours are also available as part of a listing picture package from many professional real estate photographers.
8. Make Your Virtual Tour Public
Your selected program will offer a link to your virtual tour, which is saved in the cloud after you’ve completed it. You’ll also get a code for embedding the tour on your website or social media platforms. You may embed this on your website and drive visitors to it using Google or Facebook paid advertising to promote your listing while also generating real estate leads. You may send video emails of your tour to leads and potential purchasers using platforms like BombBomb.
Create two versions of your virtual tour: one with branding and one without. Your name, brokerage, and contact information will be visible to visitors of your tour if it is branded. In areas like social media, use the branded version. Multiple listing systems often do not enable agents to add branded material to listings, thus the unbranded version is utilized.
Making a Virtual Tour: 7 Software Options
It might be difficult to choose the best virtual tour software since there are so many companies selling various versions of basically the same thing. Look for software features that interest you and will assist you in creating engaging tours with interactive elements.
For making a virtual tour, here are seven software options:
- Kuula: For developing advanced virtual tours, Kuula provides simple-to-use software and cost-effective features. For the first 100 public uploads, cloud hosting is free, and they provide help for best practices for recording and editing virtual tours.
- iStaging: iStaging enables users to build virtual tours using photographs captured with a $50 lens attachment on a smartphone. A live tour, floor plans, or a mobile-optimized virtual reality (VR) tour may all be created using iStaging. Monthly plans start at $5.
- Asteroom: Asteroom provides a platform for real estate agents to generate high-quality, seamless virtual tours using their cellphones and the Pano Kit, which costs less than $100 and includes a lens attachment and a motorized mount for capturing a 360-degree view.
- LiveTour is a virtual staging firm that offers a simple platform for making panoramic virtual tours. You may sign up for a free account if you require less than three excursions. For 15 virtual tours, the subscription version begins at $29 a month.
- EYESPY360: EYESPY360 is a virtual staging company that gives 360-degree virtual tours. They provide a free trial with one trip, as well as a $15 per-tour option and a monthly subscription. The customizable hotspots that visitors may click on to acquire additional information are the software’s main feature.
- 3DVista is a virtual tour and staging program that also comes with a mobile app. The platform is unique in that it enables you to generate interactive floor designs. Depending on the 3D and 360-degree capabilities, prices vary from $99 to $199 each month.
- Matterport: is a professional 3D tour production software and camera company. Although their professional cameras cost thousands of dollars, you can make virtual tours using a number of cameras, even your smartphone, using their software.
What Is a Virtual Tour and How Does It Work?
The phrase “virtual tour” has evolved into a catch-all term for any non-static portrayal of a property. Video walkthroughs, Virtual Tour in 3Ds, and 360-Degree Interactive Virtual Tours are examples of these. Because it does not replicate the sensation of being inside or walking through a property, a slideshow of listing images set to music is not a virtual tour. Although we’ll be concentrating on how to produce 3D and 360-degree tours, Walk-through videos are still a good approach to show buyers what it’s like to be inside a home.
Walk-through video
A video tour is a guided walk-through of a property that is frequently narrated by the listing agent and highlights the home’s characteristics and selling factors. Videos are the least realistic of the virtual tour alternatives, but they are the simplest to generate using anything from cellphones to high-tech digital video equipment. Listing videos aren’t new, but they’ve evolved into an important aspect of promoting and selling a home.
Virtual Tour in 3D
Virtual Tours in 3Ds allows users to look at imagery and experience what it might be like to move through a property. They are created by photographing spaces using a panoramic camera lens and stitching together those images on special software in order to create a streaming video.
A specialist camera or a smartphone with a lens adapter may be used to shoot photos. Because this form of a virtual tour is made up of static photos, the transition from one area to the next might seem jerky, similar to looking at something in Google Street View. In each chamber, though, viewers may stop, turn around, and back up to observe details.
360-Degree Interactive Virtual Tour
360-degree tours are comparable to virtual reality headsets in that they provide an immersive, true-to-life experience. Setting up a specific camera in the middle of a room or region is required to create a 360-degree virtual tour. When the camera is turned on, it spins to snap a 360-degree high-resolution shot of its surroundings. Each shot is then submitted to special software, which allows text, links, and other interactive multimedia information to be added to the images, giving the viewer a more dynamic experience.
360-degree virtual tours begin as a 3D model, with each click transporting you to the center of the scene. Overall, they provide a considerably richer user experience. Agents should use 360-degree tours as part of their real estate listing marketing strategy, particularly when promoting a premium home. Cameras, applications, and proprietary software are available from companies.
Conclusion
A virtual tour allows prospective buyers to get a sense of what it’s like to see a home in person. To build a tour, agents must get the necessary equipment, take photographs, then upload the photographs into tour-making software. Virtual tours are ideal for agents who want to use cutting-edge marketing technologies to highlight a property, advertise their homes without depending only on in-person showings, and compete against comparable listings in their area.
