How @Realty agents benefit from using Virtual Tours and interactive floor plans

 

 

Love virtual tours and interactive floor plans?

Hello, guys! This is Tom from Virtual Tours Creator. And this is another live for you, where we gonna talk with agents just like you. Who uses virtual tours in sales? If you would like to hear what the benefits are, what the success stories are, and what are the secret techniques they use, please tune in and see what they have to say.

Tom: Beautiful. Hello! Okay, we’ve got everyone. Hey guys, again. I’m very excited because @Realty has been the first franchise that said, yes to Virtual Tours Creator when we first started, I think in 2018. And we even have one, or two, agents that were with us almost since day one. I would like to say hello to Kaylene Farnham, hello to Ray Scarfe, and hello to Juliet Island. And also, hello to Alicia Vaughn. Yes, that’s how I, we pronounce it. We’ve got five of these guys. We’re gonna talk about the techniques the cameras that they use and what were the success stories of each one of them. We’re gonna go one by one and we’ll start with Kaylene Farnham.

So if you don’t mind, guys, I will turn everyone off so Kaylene can introduce herself, and we can start now. How about you tell us what your name is, where are you based, and anything that you love about Virtual Tours Creator, Kaylene.

Kaylene: Hi, Tom. Hi, everyone. My name’s Kaylene Farnham. We work for the @Realty team. Husband and I work together. We are based in Gympie and surrounding districts. We live at Goomboorian, so we live actually halfway between Gympie and beautiful Tinki Bay, Rambo Beach. We predominantly sell rural land and reside rural residential and farming. So we do quite a lot of acreage properties and cover quite a distance. So, yeah, we definitely use the virtual tour camera quite a lot. I’ve purchased my first one from Tom back in July, 2018, and have used it on every listing with a house on it ever since.

Tom: Okay.

Kaylene: Absolutely love it! Yeah.

Tom: Could I ask you, do you have the biggest success story or any example of how the virtual tours really helps you with sales, because that’s what others would like to hear?

Kaylene: Sure. One that comes to mind just recently, we sold a seven and a half acre property with a four bedroom house on it, just outside of Gympie, to a family in New South Wales who were in lockdown at the time that they looked at were trying to purchase. So the virtual tours were invaluable. They looked at that many, many times. I viewed at that, viewed that online, coupled with also the floor plan that I now use also through Virtual Tours Creator. And just like a FaceTime walkthrough of the property.

Tom: So, did you use your drone for us on this tour? I would like to show others now the example of how you also incorporate Drone 360s, and maybe you can also, in the minimal will be showing it. Talk about the new iPhone camera that you now started using or whatever you like.

Kaylene: Yeah, sure, sure. We always carry quite a lot of camera gear to our properties. We, I do flamboyant photography as well. My husband gears and has a drone. So together we, we do the package and incorporate the drone 360 degree virtual tour in with my inside of the house virtual tour. Find it very easy to do, find the application, extremely user friendly, and had really good feedback. Have definitely won listings because of having the gear to be able to use and offer to the owners. And yeah, it’s definitely a real advantage for us. We have since changed over from the 360 camera to the lens on the iPhone. As Tom mentioned, very easy to use, quite cost effective. Like I said, we already carry a fair bit of camera gear, so it just goes in that corner of the camera box and it’s always with us when, when we’re going to photograph a property. The real advantage I guess is that, like I mentioned before, people from outta stage who can’t get to actually physically view the property can feel like they’re walking through it in real time. So it’s definitely an advantage to us.

Tom: Yes. and also, do you use the floor plan service of creating the floor plans out of virtual tours for about $29?

Kaylene: Correct.

Tom: Is that a saving tool for you guys?

Kaylene: Absolutely! You know, to be honest, when my floor plans came out a few years ago, I wasn’t really keen on the idea, but I have changed my mind about that. Absolutely, I use it every time. Now. Again once again, if the property’s got a house on it, they automatically get a floor plan done. Just amazing how the floor bands come back so accurate and correct as long as you remember to photograph every room which has been forgotten. You just need to make sure you’ve got a plan in place and photograph from front to back and then outside and around the back sort of thing. So that yeah, it gives you a good overview. What I’ve found is the buyers, especially now a lot of them are working from home. A lot of them like to be able to see the floor plan up front to see if there’s a room towards maybe the front of the house to use as an office or a massage room or whatever their work choices are. And sometimes, you know, that obviously discounts a property maybe straight up, but also puts the property into the selected few they wanna view as well. So it certainly saves time in doing viewings. If the floor plan just doesn’t work for the buyer, well then they know straight up that they need to keep looking for another property.

Tom: Okay, just to sum up, Kaylene, would you recommend us to anyone else? Would you also say that the training is good enough? Because some people might be afraid that, you know, they won’t be able to do it?

Kayline: Yes, yes. No, I definitely recommend you to anyone that wants to use it. Training is great. Tom, you’re always on hand if I’ve got a question via phone or email has been fantastic. The videos that you put out, and the training videos are very easy to follow and cover it. Pretty much everything you really need to know. It’s definitely been very easy for me to do.

Tom: Okay, thank you very much, Kaylene. I’m going to switch you off for now.

Kaylene: Okay, bye-bye.

Tom: Stay tuned with us. Maybe you can still answer some questions later, but we are gonna jump to Alicia. Hello, Alicia! Okay. And you hear me?

Alicia: Hello, Tom. Yes, I can. And look, I apologize for the camera that it’s definitely not playing, it’s playing up. So, you’ll have to just listen to my voice.

Tom: Yes, no worries. We’re gonna show the property that you have. Sorry, I jumped again. Okay. So, what’s your name? Where are you based? What do you think about VTC? Any success stories? Go ahead. 

Alicia: Sure.Okay, so hi everyone. Hi Tom. I’m Alicia. I’m based in sort of the broad Sydney area, I guess. And this unit that you’re looking at now is in Gosford and it’s quite a spectacular penthouse unit that we’ve got with amazing views. So, I guess, much like Kaylene, my partner and I do all the photography ourselves and we found this 360 tour to be, I guess, a really fantastic add-on because a couple of things people have commented on the fact that you can’t touch up the 360 tours. Like you can touch up a photo. So with a photo, people can change them and make them different. As you can see here, this is the view from the veranda. We haven’t zoomed in, we haven’t touched anything up. This is actually the view, which is quite impressive. So when you’ve got places like this, I find that people are quite receptive to a 360 tour. Tom, you are the one who told me about this, you know, go to the Gosford Boat Ramp. We hadn’t even thought about that, which is fantastic to be able to do that and show people the location shot as well. We actually acquired the camera by accident because one of the @Realty agents couldn’t use it with his phone, so, we bought it from him. And we are so glad that we did. Cause we almost didn’t even think about it. It was only through him telling us and, look at this amazing offering we have now, which is we, we just love it. During the lockdown, the good thing about this, in particular with this unit, because it’s unit and it’s in, I guess, the gossip area, there were some issues with getting people through it during the lockdown. So people were able to see it and have a really good look and a good understanding of how the unit worked, which is very helpful. And we’ve now since had an offer accepted. So hopefully, it stays, her fingers crossed. But as a result, the lady said that she’d looked at the 360 a number of times and really loved the fact that she felt she was already in the unit, which is something you can’t get from photos or videos. Yeah, we love it. We think it’s great.

Tom: So, do you reckon you can justify the cost of buying the set for $450?

Alicia: It’s nothing. Oh, you paid more than that. Just for one photo shoot from a professional photographer. And the great thing about this, Tom, I am terrible with technology and when I do, I’ve uploaded some myself. No problem. And when I’ve had any problems, you are on the phone, you’re at the other end. You’re very quick. When we actually took these photos, I don’t know if you remember, but my partner just reminded me he had to call you on a Saturday, and you were there. You answered the phone or called him straight back, I can’t remember. And fixed the problem in five minutes, which is just fantastic because a lot of other places won’t give you a, a Saturday or a Sunday service. You are always available and you make it so easy. But, you know, you mentioned the tutorials just now with Kaylene, and to be honest with you, I, I think I may have looked at one at the beginning, but I didn’t really need them. Cause it’s so straightforward. It’s very intuitive. So that’s everything just sort of works. And when it doesn’t, you just fix it.

Tom: Beautiful. Okay. Well, so would you recommend us to anyone else?

Alicia: Oh, absolutely. That’s why I jumped at the chance to do this for you because I think that the service that you give for a small business is amazing because I feel like when I have called you as though I’m your only client, and I can clearly see that I’m not, but I have got a lot of at personalized attention. And the value for money, as I said, I mean the one-off cost is less than what you’d pay a professional photographer to come and do anything. And the fact that you can do the tours, you can do one-off tours or you can pay a monthly fee, I think is very nice because you’ve got the, I guess, the flexibility there to manage your spend.

Tom: Fantastic. Okay,  well thank you very much for this awesome testimonial and for being with us. Regardless of the problems. We’re gonna now jump into Juliet and we’ll talk to you soon. Alicia, don’t go anywhere. Hello, Juliet!

Juliet: Hi, Tom! How are you?

Tom: Very good, thank you. We’re a few adventures. Juliet is our special customer who works on beautiful Tanglooma Island, but she’s based in Brisbane. Tell us about yourself. Tell us about your business. How VTC is useful? Also, you might mention a few of our issues but also if there was a fix to that if it helped. Yeah, go ahead, and let’s hear it from you, Juliet.

Juliet: So, I’m Juliet Ireland as Tom just said. And I’m actually based on the record Peninsula, which is the northern suburbs of Brisbane. But I do specialize in Tangalooma Island which is on Moreton Island. So for those who don’t know where that is, it’s about an hour and a half boat ride from Brisbane. So it is quite remote. So for me to go over there to show the property iis a day trip. So I can’t just pick up the phone and say, yep, I’ll meet you in an hour down the road and show a property. It’s very complex and a logistic nightmare getting in around holiday bookings because it is part of a resort. So it’s pretty heavily booked as well. So, the VTC I have actually, it’s just been absolutely amazing for me because I’ve been over, I have photographed all my properties with it, picked it up pretty much from the, from the word go. Very, very easy to use. I use my iPhone 12 Pro Max cuz it’s got the nice big screen. So, the photos are nice and clear to see what I’m taking them and just easy to use. Absolutely..

Tom:  And also, Juliet, can I just, sorry, interrupt you for a second. How many properties did you shoot at one day? Once we figured it out? Was it quick? Because I think that’s also, the speed of creating the virtual tours might be very important for you or, you know, agents that also work in such remote environments.

Alicia: Yeah, I was there for a three day period cause I own a property there, so I mean, I can go and stay, which is great. But I shot five properties in one day and I was finished by about three o’clock, went back to my property, sat down with the computer, already uploaded on there and, put it together and everything was online on the internet by seven o’clock that night. Easy!

Tom: I’m glad to hear that. Any, success stories so far?

Alicia: Yes, I was over there probably about three weeks ago and I did a VTC of a villa that I’m selling. Sent that straight through to a buyer that I have been talking to who’s down south and can’t get here, obviously because of COVID. And, he basically purchased it on the spot.

Tom: Wow!

Alicia: So, the property was listed and sold within three days.

Tom: Good return on the investment?

Alicia: Oh, it costs me, um, I’ll probably double what it would cost any other agent to have a photographer over there because I have to pay for a day. Um, plus pay their ferry charges and everything else. So to do this, I mean, I’m the world’s most worst photographer. Cannot take a decent photo if you ask me to yet with these; it’s just amazing. It’s like I’m a professional photographer and I’m not. I’m just a basic snapper. So it works really, really well. I also have buyers a lot for me to stay with who want to do video tours. So, I’ll go over and like I said, it’s a three hour trip there and back plus a whole day. And I’ll get to the property, get it ready, try to call them to do the video, and for some reason they’re not available, which is really annoying, because that’s the whole day, wasted and my precious time. Whereas with this, they can do that and don’t need the video. They just walk through it themselves and make their straight up.

Tom: Wow. Okay. So this is, I wanted to ask you one important question cause we never brought this up with other agents. What if something breaks? What if the camera doesn’t work? Was our response quick enough satisfactory for you? Because obviously there might be sometimes issues with any kind of equipment and it happened to Juliet.

Alicia: Yes, I had, I did have a problem one day that you’ll be aware of where I was actually just about to throw everything out the window. I mean, it was a Bluetooth issue, obviously, and be in a remote island, you get those things to happen. But you were straight on the phone. I rang you, you answered immediately. We videoed it through, we sorted the problem. I did have to have a little replacement of a part. Something happened there we are not aware of. And it was through within two days fixed, done. And I haven’t looked back. Perfect!

Tom: Oh, beautiful. So would you, would you recommend us for training services and the virtual tools themselves?

Alicia: I already have. I do it every day and I will continue to do so. This for me is a game changer. And I think for anybody in the industry, it’s a game changer, especially with COVID because it’s just changed the way we all work. And we all know that doing private inspections a lot of the time can be just about impossible. So this just sells the properties for you.

Tom: Okay. Well, thank you very much, Juliet for your time.

Alicia: Thank you, Tom.

Tom: Stay with us cause we might have some questions for the people watching us, guys who can ask questions. Because we might have to answer some I hope some other @Realty agents are watching us, but now we are gonna jump to Ray Scarfe. Thank you, Juliet.

Ray, you have also been one of the first @Realty agents that joined us. You have been also a big advocate for the VTC system. How about you introduce yourself? You tell us about, how you not only sell your properties. Maybe you can also share with us, the secrets of doing virtual tours for other agents. I don’t know. Take over. There you go. Hello, Ray. 

Ray: Oh, good day, Tom. Yeah, thanks! I’m a huge fan of virtual tours. Yeah, I wouldn’t consider listing a property without them. I also do my own photography, which I was actually led into after doing the virtual tours. And then, I alert the rest of the stool photography. And I find by doing the virtual tour first sort of gives you a good chance to go around the house and just get a feel of where the good angles are and all the rest of it. And I take it from there.

Tom: What was the biggest success story? Because that’s probably everyone’s interested. You know, and also you are using a 360 camera because our iPhone solution is only for iPhones, but anyone with any phone can use the VTC system. You’re just gonna need a 360 camera. So I’m gonna show you one of your tours because that’s also very important. You go ahead, you can, please talk about it, and then we’re gonna get to also the floor plan service that you use.

Ray: Sure, yeah. I use the Ricoh Theta V no backup of the Rita, the Richo Theta. What do I think they call it? S sc 2?

Tom: SC 2, yes.

Ray: Yeah. I am considering upgrading to the Theta Z1. From, from what I research, I have a better HDR than any of the other cameras. So the whatever you spend on the cameras or the effort is you just get paid in multiples. You can’t measure the return on investment. 

Tom: But was it worth it?

Ray: Of course it is. You couldn’t, I wouldn’t wanna be trying to sell a property without it. Just recently, I sold a property for 1.36 to the eventual buyers. I was sort of running some teaser ads on Facebook before actually, I put it on the major web portals and one of these, the eventual buyers wanted to put an offer in, on the strength of the virtual tour. And I said, well, look, you can come and see you couple. So they, they did turn out to be the eventual buyers.

Tom: I wanted to ask you, Ray, because you are in the Sunshine Coast area.

Ray: Yeah.

Tom: And the market is hot on the Gold Coast, you know, in Queensland in general, because of Victorians and New South Wales moving up north; even though it’s such a hot market, you still keep doing those virtual tours. And, you know, some agents might say, well, the market is hot, we don’t really need to do anything. What’s your response to that?

Ray: Well, it’ll be crazy in the head because the other thing I particularly like about the tours, Tom, is, you know, on the top hand right-hand corner of your reports page age, you can see, how many people have played the view of the tour.

Tom: Oh, analytics.

Ray: The analytics, yeah. Over the last seven days. Cause I give them weekly reports. They buy the, the owners weekly reports. So I always save that as a pdf and it shows how long, how many people have viewed the property, how long have stayed on it, and which website it came off. Yes. And I’ve got a particular card up a sleeve if you like. I run Facebook ads, which I, when people get invited to click on learn more, like take a click on Learn more for the webpage in the virtual tour, and that takes them straight off to my webpage. And once you go onto my webpage, it’s not like realestate.com, there’s no other, no other property you can look at and only look at mine.

Tom: Okay. That’s, that’s a great idea.

Ray: I reckon that’s vastly bit than squandering your money with realestate.com. And anyway, your analytics tells me exactly how many people have come off my website, which is directly off the Facebook ads, and how long they’ve spent on it. And many a time. It’s sort of several times more than the domain in realestate.com

Tom: That’s fantastic! Come off the, and I can show that to the fellows, which I’m not getting from anyone else.

Tom: Oh, yes. I forget that. I’ve heard from many agents, that those analytics help you to justify why the property might be, you know, moving a bit slower than usual. Maybe the price is too high or maybe the property is not as good as it should be for the price. But if you have, you know, 400 people visiting the tour or a thousand, you definitely have proof that you did show it to enough people, don’t you?

Ray: Yeah. And not only that, if you got somebody who you suspect is a bit interested, more interested in the property than they’re letting on, and there’s all of a sudden a huge spike in the number of two views on the tour, you know, somebody’s having a good look at it and you know, which website they’re coming off. So it all helps. Absolutely.

Tom: Okay. Oh, beautiful. Thank you very much, Ray. Alright! Yes?

Ray: Well, I was gonna say one other thing. If anyone’s you well, I suppose everyone’s using a tripod. Just move this into I had the misfortune of a camera blowing over and wind in the wind and smashing the lens. Just move that, and there you go.

Tom: You’ve got the weight. Yes.

Ray: Sinkers down the bottom, though. I just made that weight up, and the day it blew over was a very small gust of wind, but anytime outdoors. So I wouldn’t be without my little necklace 

Tom: Without the weights. Okay. Thank you very much, Ray. Guys, we’re just gonna sum up. I really wanted to thank you so much for your time, for being with us, for your support, and for using us. I hope you know the rest of the real estate of @Realty Agents is gonna sit because we really only work with about 30 or 40 with you in total, out of the whole 500. And if any of you has any idea why the rest is not using us, maybe you can give them a nudge and say, Hey, this technology is here, and you could use it. I hope you know @Realty is gonna share it on their Facebook. Thank you very much. I’m gonna give you a little wave, guys. I’m so glad again that you joined us. Thank you for your patience. I’m gonna let you go now because it’s been a very big half an hour for you. Don’t hang up just yet. I’m just gonna finish the video and we might have a chat if you want. I will, guys, everyone watching, sign up to our portal to our channel to see more news about virtual tours for real estate, both in sales and property management. We are signing out. I’m gonna say goodbye, and we’ll see again.

 

See for yourself how @Realty agents benefit from using Virtual Tours and interactive floor plans to sell properties in 2021 !!!

 

DIY virtual tours for real estate

How to make a virtual tour?

Virtual Tours Creator is the only software in the whole wide world that will teach you ONE ON ONE how to do the 360 tours. We will hold your hand throughout the whole process. From buying the proper camera, through taking your first 360 photos, uploading them to a vr tour, teaching you how to properly position the camera around the property to publishing it. Not like all other providers who only offer to tak your money for the subscription :). KEEP THAT IN MIND.

Of course, 360 camera or the VTC 360 set is essential, so you must buy it. It is a modern device, but easy to use. All you have to do is put it on a tripod  in the center of the room and set it via mobile app. After a few seconds panoramic photo is ready, so you can take the camera to the other place. Whole process should not take more than 10 to 20 minutes (depending on the size of property), so you can save a lot of time.

Virtual Tours Creator is a perfect solution for real estate sellers who want to be up to date with client’s needs. Using this platform is very cost effective and competitive but the quality of finished vr tour is excellent and is praised by clients. If you use this technology properly, especially now, you will start picking up clients in no time. You can sell with 360 virtual tours in less than two weeks and easily get new listings, significantly increasing your earnings. At this moment in time there is not that many other agencies that are offering 360 tours, so it is a competitive edge, which helps to stand out from the competition.

What are you waiting for? Buy the 360 camera and, register for free at virtualtourscreator.com.au​, make photos and get new clients – as simple is that! The value you will get from new commissions, property managements, listings, and the promotion will be beyond your expectation. On top of that, you will spend a lot less on it than if you ordered a professional implementation.

Rent or sell sight unseen, win more listings, and stand out of your competition. Present your offers in most effective and easiest, affordable way. Use online software to create unique virtual tours in under 15 minutes for less than $3!