Why include virtual tours in real estate marketing.
Well – why wouldn’t you when it is this easy and inexpensive?
Most buyers don’t even look at online listings if they don’t include a virtual tour. Buyers are now more educated, or so far away that they expect to get a good feel for a property before they visit an open home or arrange an inspection.
Realty Talk founder Kevin Turner is a trusted voice in property investment so see what he has to say about it 🙂
Hello, once again, welcome to Tech Talk and we’re coming to you live, of course. We’re talking about virtual tours today. Why would you want to include a virtual tour in your home marketing efforts? Well, I guess it’s more appropriate to say, why wouldn’t you? Nowadays, many buyers don’t even look online at properties if they don’t have a virtual tour. We’ll prove that to you in this conversation. I think we need to understand, as agents, that the buyer is now more educated than ever before. Certainly more than say, even a decade ago. They want to and they expect to see and get a good feel for a property before they visit, either at an open home or with an inspection. Australia is leading the world in virtual tour technology and you don’t have to travel very far from where I am right now to find out why and how. Based in Queensland is Tom Dorawa. He is the man behind Virtual Tours Creator. Tom, did I get the correct?
– Oh, you rolled it perfectly.
– I love your accent too and I love trying to say your name correctly because it’s not easy for us. We don’t normally roll our tongue, but Dorawa, how’s that?
– Yes, yes. Well, you’re doing a good job. Hello, everyone. Hello, Australia and the rest of the world. Very excited to be here. Thank you, Kevin, for finding us–
– It’s a pleasure.
– -and willing to have a chat with me.
– Well, I actually found you through our good friends at realestate.com.au, and when I was in a meeting with them, they said, hey, you’ve really got to talk to Tom because his product is out of this world. So, I’m really keen. And coming from them too, that’s a great recommendation for you, Tom. We’ll talk more about why that is so important in just a moment, but can we just start with the facts? What are the facts? How much more traffic can you expect to your listing when you use a virtual tour?
– Well, we can definitely get a lot more traffic than just from posting normal photos or videos. But it all depends what kind of traffic we’re talking about. We can talk about traffic to your listing on realestate.com.au or domain or any other property portals, or whether we’re talking about your personal website or your company website, whether we’re talking about the open houses or whether we’re talking about traffic to social media. So how about I quickly just start with the obvious one for Australia, realestate.com.au or domain. If your virtual tools are on the second photo of the listing, just after the first normal photo–
– The hero, yep.
– -and that’s where we are as a virtual tours creator, you can get 200 to 2000 views per month. So that’s a very important thing because if your virtual tools provider is not approved by any of those portals, your traffic is gonna be around five to 15 views per month. So it’s not really gonna take you anyway. So that’s the first point. Yes, definitely, it brings a lot of traffic. Secondly, your private website. Some of you may not think about it, but a lot of agencies in Australia are very clever and they’re doing a great job, and one of them is our customer in Bondi Junction, Robert Paradis, who tracks his website traffic via Google Analytics. And since he started posting virtual tools on his listings, the number of people coming to his website tripled–
– Wow.
– -per month.
– Wow.
– Yes, yes. And you don’t know that until you have the proper tools, but many of our customers know that. Yes. So it was really also unexpected for us. Although, we are in the technology ward, but Robert pointed this out himself. So a great testimonial from a customer in Sydney.
– Yeah, this is just great evidence, isn’t it? That people are attracted to them. I just watch Carolyn, my wife, when she’s doing research on properties. She is attracted to properties. One that they have a virtual tour or they have some kind of videos. It’s the ability to actually at your own pace be able to look around. That’s what I love about virtual tours, especially with the hotspots, which we’ll talk about shortly but the ability to sort of go where you want in a property as opposed to, even a video is great, but a video, you have to follow, whereas with a virtual tour you can set your own path.
– Yes. And that’s the great thing about virtual tours. They allow people to have their own perspective on the property. And you know, today’s persona of a potential buyer or renter has changed, and it’s changing dramatically. And everyone has to remember, we are doing it all for the customers. You know? So the buyer should be satisfied in the first place. And normal photography or even videos, they are created from the perspective of the photographer or the agent. Yep. And people in today’s world, they get photos, videos from everywhere. They expect something more, they expect something different and they want their own perspective. And when you put a person inside of a house where they can have a look around, that’s exactly what they get, that’s exactly what they want. And also, they can go through that property in their own pace, as you said, but also whenever and wherever they want to. People are time poor, and they don’t have really time to run around on the weekend to visit open houses. They would like to spend time with their family, their friends or just simply get enough information to choose the right house before they give their precious time to go to that property.
– Yeah. I want to stay with that point about video because to me it’s so one-dimensional, isn’t it? But when you’re on a virtual tour, you can pause in a room, you can have a look around, swing the camera around and really get a feel for the home. It’s the next best thing to actually being in there. Can I just pick up on another point? And we’re talking here about traffic to a website. That’s eyeballs to the website. I think it’s even more important that we not only make that experience quite thrilling for them, but that they want to stay there. And I think the evidence is quite clear that people are willing to stay and spend more time looking at the property if it has a virtual tour, Tom.
– Yes, yes. We have those numbers from REA Research and it only proves that listings with virtual reality tools get 50%, more than 50% time spent on that listing, which is an amazing amount of time. Because normally, people nowadays, everyone, you’ve probably been in that situation, I’ve been in that situation, you just sit there and you flick through all the photos. Oh hey, next, next, next. But when the tool comes up, 90% of people, not only in Australia, around the world, haven’t really seen a virtual reality tour of a property and now they stop and they engage with it because you can click on it and you can walk from room to room and it’s like your little own adventure. It’s very immersive and fun. So only for that reason, people stop, maybe in two years time, hopefully, it’s gonna be a standard and they’re not gonna be as impressed as now, but now it’s definitely the time to jump onboard and to build your brand as an agent in your local area that brings some exquisite quality to your services and to your vendors or buyers.
– I think we’ve demonstrated quite clearly here the power of what we’re talking about, the virtual tour, and how… I was staggered the other day. I interviewed someone in America who said to me that Australia was certainly leading the world in virtual tour technology, but also embracing, like buyers and sellers embracing the technology in Australia, much more than they do in the States. So that’s obviously an emerging market. But it says a lot about people like yourself who are developing great technology for us to use here. Can I just ask you, Tom, what’s required for an agent to actually get a virtual tour of all of their properties, which I think they should be doing? So, what’s involved?
– Yeah. First of all, you need all the equipment. So you need a camera. That’s right behind me. A tripod. The camera is pretty much the size of half of your phone.
– What sort of camera is that? Could you give us the make?
– Yeah, yeah. The camera is made by a Chinese producer called XiaoMi. We have a 12 month warranty on those cameras and the model is called Madventure. There’s actually two cameras, but they are available on our website, the whole description for that.
– [Kevin] Could we get a link that’ll give us a bit more information? We’ll put that in the description underneath here. We’ll probably end up with a few links out of this interview. So, look for all the links down below.
– Yeah, not a problem. And look, we as Virtual Tours Creator, we want to be a one stop shop for you. So we not only supply you with software, but also we choose the best hardware on the market. This little camera takes photos in 7K, so 7,000 pixels, which is very important for the quality of your tools. Obviously, that’s the best camera in this price point up to 500 Australian dollars. There are bigger and better cameras, but for an average agent that wants to do it quickly, this is what we recommend. That’s actually the other model, slightly new one with a different color. And secondly, you need software. So VTC, Virtual Tours Creator, that’s our software, very simple, easy and fast solution that allows agents to upload the photos that they’ve taken with the camera online and connect them with so-called hotspots. So those arrows that allow you to move from room to room just by simply clicking on them. And on top of that, our software also allows you to upload your floor plan, which is a staple in real estate, and add interactive hotspots on different little places on the floor plan where people can click on them and also move from room to room, if they don’t want to click on those big arrows that are called hotspots. And that’s usually it, that’s what you need, that’s what you get when you sign up for any virtual tours creator software, but we offer more. I like to pride ourselves on providing the after service and the guidance, because it’s such a new technology that not everyone, even though we have all the tutorials and videos, you still have to have somebody that’s gonna hold your hand after you get the camera and you take it out of the box. So we are available on the phone. We are here for the agents and we’re gonna guide them through the process of creating the tools if they have any trouble. From the feedback that we’re getting from our customers that we’re doing a pretty good job, and I hope that makes them love the, not only the software, but also hardware in this whole adventure with virtual reality.
– It is an adventure and it’s a great experience. And you’ve also got a lot of how to videos available as well on your YouTube channel. We’ll put a link to that under here. So, there’s a lot of help there for you. Let’s talk cost. What is the cost of doing this, Tom, for an agent?
– Well, the cost, I would like to say is marginal, compared to whatever you’re gonna get from that. But you can start with a free virtual tour. You can set up an account, we don’t need your credit card details and you can start uploading your photos, if you have them, for free. And when that works for you and you decide you’d like to take that one step further, we’ve got three other plans. They’re starting with $19.95 for free virtual tools at any given time, all the way up to 30 tours for $99 per month. So that works out pretty much two to $7 per property. Although you don’t pay for property, you pay a subscription, but there’s no yearly agreement, nothing to tie you down. And with that subscription, I want to just emphasize again that we supply you with that service. So when you’re gonna do your first tour, even though you watch the tutorials, we show you exactly how to do this, how to do that. But you know, how many times you’ve watched something and then you go to the property and this house that you’re in is totally different to the one that you’ve seen on the video. And that’s why you can reach out for your phone and call us because we’re gonna be there to hold your hand, we’re gonna be there to point out the things that you can improve when you take the tours, because the most important thing is the tool delivered to the agents’ customers who are buyers, that will understand the house. If they will not understand the layout of the house, if they will not be feeling comfortable in that property, you’re gonna lose that sale, you’re gonna lose that customer just because nobody shows you how to properly do the tour and you’re gonna magically transfer yourself from the living room, through the upstairs bedroom, through the ceiling. But, you know, because that’s what the examples are, when we talk to to people when you just give them the cameras and the software. You need some guidance.
– Yeah. And we shouldn’t forget also that this is a valuable tool for property management, property managers can use it as well as sales people. So that’s something you shouldn’t lose sight of, bringing this new initiative into your property management department. One other point before we go, and we’re just about out of time, Tom, I’m sorry, but the approval to get it onto realestate.com.au, as an example, it’s always best to check that the software you’re using is actually going to be able to display on REA. Is that correct?
– Yes, yes. Because, you know, there might be some suppliers from around the world that offer software that you can use for creating virtual reality tours. But then in the end, you end up with virtual tours that you can’t really connect to anyway. And there’s really no point of doing that. But what I wanted to tell you about is a few, if you don’t mind, is a few great examples of what the tools deliver in general. So from our customers, it’s all about the value that you get from those tours. So spending that $20 or $40 a month on the access to create them is nothing compared to what you get. We’ve got Larry Clifford from Brisbane, from ED Realty who just confirmed he had his first property sold only because he posted a virtual reality tour. He posted photos on realestate.com.au before, it didn’t work, there was this lady that wanted to buy it, then he posted a virtual reality tour on Facebook. She saw it, she asked to come for reopen house, and then next Thursday she went unconditional. So it’s confirmed they allow you to sell properties. Then we’ve got Cameron Hamilton from Cairns, and this is something that we didn’t talk about because the virtual tours are not only for selling the properties, but they are a tool that’s gonna allow you to win listings. Imagine walking into a presentation to a vendor and showing them a virtual tour on your mobile phone and telling them, hey, I can do this for you if you sign up the contract with me, sorry, something’s loading, for free or for $50. And this is gonna be that exceptional value that nobody else in the area can provide. Moreover, we supply you with the camera, with the software, but also with cardboard goggles. So you can use this for your presentation when you walk into a vendor’s house. You put your phone in here and then you show them the tour and they can find themself inside of a property like if they were there. So this is a true virtual reality experience.
– That’s amazing. That is incredible. So that all comes as part of the package?
– Yes, that comes as part of the package. We definitely can have something special for all your viewers. We might even put a link to that. But talking about those winning listings, we got another agent, Carly Wise, she’s never sold a property above a million. I gave her a pair of goggles and an example virtual tour, and she walked into that meeting and she won herself a two and a half million property listing in Clear Island Waters on the Gold Coast within one hour. And what was more interesting was the owners didn’t really want to see too many people coming through the open house because they value their privacy, and when she told them, I have the goggles, I can show your house in here in my office and choose only the ones that are really interested in the property, that just sold it to them.
– [Kevin] Fantastic, yeah.
– She just stepped up the game. We’ve got LJ Hooker in Cairns, who just two weeks ago, sold the first property in Cairns to an interstate buyer who didn’t even fly into Cairns, because he inspected the property by . And then for property management, we have Ray White in Coast Harbor. We have two other companies on the Gold Coast. The money you can save yourself by changing the marketing mix, because in property management, there’s not much money for photography. So they only have one photo of the property from the outside. The rest is a virtual tour. And a few days after posting the first virtual tour, Lisa called me from Coast Harbor and told me that the inquiries, the number of inquiries they got about that property went through the roof. They never experienced something like that. Because you know, for property rentals, it’s even more important for the time poor people not to go to those open houses. And they’re not gonna go into a mortgage for 30 years, so they would rather see on their phone and make some decisions. And when they found the houses that they like, and they come to the open house, they are qualified. You don’t get the tire kickers. No next door neighbors. It’s working. And Ray Scarf from Sunshine Coast confirms that he says, he thinks he gets more people through the door at the open house than ever before.
– Yeah, wonderful evidence too. And I know you could go on and give us a lot more examples because I’ve spoken to you about that, but look, Tom, I love your enthusiasm. I love your product. We’re very happy to give it some exposure because I think this is the future for agents. We need to understand that this is where it’s headed. And all the best. Thank you so much for spending some time with us. And I look forward to catching up with you again, and all the success in the world with your business.
– Oh, thank you very much, Kevin. Lovely to talk to everyone. Yeah, let’s stay in touch and let’s see you where it’s gonna take us. See you around. Thank you.
DIY virtual tours for real estate
How to make a virtual tour?
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