The real estate industry continues to evolve over time alongside technology and other societal improvements. However, with increased demand for more properties and greater competition among real estate agents, you may be wondering how to make your properties stand out. There are many property listing websites and apps that allow anyone to put their homes up for sale or rent. Additionally, real estate agents have their own sites they use to convince buyers to schedule tours, acquire loans, and purchase properties. You can start browsing the net and search for the keyword “real estate agents near me” if you want to see the list of reputable agents in the area.

Many homebuyers take it upon themselves to learn about properties for sale in their area, so realtors must make it easier for house hunters to narrow down their search and make their properties stand out. Virtual tours are just one way realtors help potential buyers learn more about a property, allowing them to view a home without seeing it in person, ultimately narrowing down their options. When buyers can make decisions in the comfort of their own homes, realtors connect with only qualified buyers who are ready to take the next step and purchase a home. 

Rather than spending days on in-person tours, talking to hundreds of people every day, even those that aren’t interested in making a purchase, realtors can focus on buyers who are interested in the property and serious about making an offer. So you might wonder, should every real estate property have a virtual tour? The answer is complicated, but virtual tours offer many benefits.

What Are Virtual Tours?

Virtual tools engage prospective buyers and renters using virtual reality (VR) technology that allows people to tour a property remotely. With this technology, you can walk through a home without actually visiting the location. If you’ve spent time looking for an apartment or looking through various real estate apps, you may have experienced a virtual tour for real estate already, walking through a home to try to imagine what it would be like to live there. 

Benefits of Virtual Tours

In the real estate industry,virtual tours offer many benefits. Here are just a few of the advantages of this trend for realtors.

Easy to Display Properties

People are trying to accomplish more from home than ever before, so it’s no surprise that they want to get more information about a property before wasting time visiting it in person. While photographs and videos can be useful for showcasing a home, many people prefer a better experience that allows them to explore a home and its surrounding landscaping, instead of seeing them from the perfect angle. Virtual tours highlight all the different spaces, allowing someone to navigate the entire home by moving from one room to another to find every detail.

Some virtual tours also allow interested parties to click different areas of the home to get more details about it. For example, realtors can inform the viewer about exclusive features of the home, such as when updates were performed and what makes the house unique. 

Improves Conversions 

Realtors need to increase the number of interested parties, gather contact information, and schedule tours of the home to get as many offers as possible. After all, the more offers on the house, the better it is for their client, the seller. Real estate agents, who may be well aware of foreclosure scams, who do tons of hard work to sell a house, including staging it, taking phones, hiring videographers, and doing tons of local market research. If you want to get more offers, though, people need to set up appointments to visit the home.

Interested buyers who contact realtors are already interested in the property, but they don’t have the right visuals to help them decide whether or not they should put down an offer. Many people will be only mildly interested based on images you added to a listing site. However, once they arrive at the home to get the whole picture, they may not find the property as attractive as they thought it was in the photos. 

If you’re talking to many interested parties that view the home and stop communicating with you, all your hard work is going to waste. Virtual tours can help prevent this by increasing the number of calls from interested parties that are more interested in the property based on the tour they’ve seen before seeing it in person. Tembusu Grand Showflat enjoys pocketed sea views, with a clear view of Singapore Sports Hub and Central Business District skyline. Therefore, by highlighting all aspects of the home in the virtual tour, you can talk to more qualified buyers who are more likely to put down offers. 

Cost Effective and Easy

Virtual tours are cost-effective and easy to set up, especially if you use WordPress for your website. This website builder has a plugin named WPVR, which allows you to create virtual tours without the need for professionals. Of course, if you’re not tech savvy, it’s always best to hire a developer who can help you create the best virtual tour experience to increase calls from prospective buyers. 

While working with these video production professionals will cost money, it may be worth it to help you sell an expensive property faster and for more money to increase your ROI. 

Improves Trust

Many buyers take what realtors say about a home with a grain of salt because they know their jobs are to make a home seem as attractive as possible to get more offers. However, with virtual tours, buyers no longer need to visit properties in person before narrowing down their options. Instead, they can explore properties through virtual tours. Virtual tours can increase trust between realtors and buyers by showing rather than telling, making buyers develop a genuine interest in the home to understand whether or not it has everything they’re looking for.

Does Every Property Need a Virtual Tour?

Buyers and renters are still interested in seeing properties in person before they’re willing to sign anything or offer money for it. Therefore, while virtual tours can help increase conversions and the number of interested buyers, they’re not necessary for every property. If your goal is to get people in the home for a tour to show them different features they can touch and feel, you may not need a virtual tour; instead, you can rely on other efforts to generate buzz about a home. 

If you are interested in joining the real estate community, check out vacancies to become a real estate agent here

Ashley Nielsen

Ashley Nielsen earned a B.S. degree in Business Administration Marketing at Point Loma Nazarene University. She is a freelance writer who loves to share knowledge about general business, marketing, lifestyle, wellness, and financial tips. During her free time, she enjoys being outside, staying active, reading a book, or diving deep into her favorite music.