Why Lee Woodward recommends Virtual Tours for Real Estate
Lee Woodward is one of Australia and New Zealand’s most in-demand real estate sales trainers, leadership coaches and keynote speakers. As Creative Director of Australia’s largest real estate training and systems development company (formerly Real Estate Academy) now Realtair Academy and founder of Complete Data and Real Estate Hot Topics, Lee and his team continue to set the bar for training, continual improvement and systems development within the industry.
Lee was recognized as one of the world’s top 10 trainers under the age of 40 in 2009 and is the author of two industry best selling books, ‘What to Say, What to Send’ and Frameworks – Foundations & Systems for Success in Real Estate Sales.
As we continue with our digital agent, we’ve now got an opportunity to look at what does the consumer actually want in the digital inspection of real estate. And over the last two months, we’ve been showcasing some brilliant videos. Uh, Joel Davis was part of our program, and he showed you how he was doing his virtual tours for property management, and that really put the sales game into a whole spin of, wow. Look at the detailed information you can now get. And joining me today is Tom. Tom, welcome aboard.
Tom: Hello. Hey guys. Hi Lee. Thank you for having me here.
Lee: Tom, tell us a bit about yourself, your company, and what virtual tools you do.
Tom: Okay, well, Virtual Tours Creator started just over two years ago. We provide a software that allows pretty much anyone, especially agents or property managers, or BDMs, to create a 360 walkthrough of any property, as quickly as 15 minutes. On an example of a three bedroom house, the first little is around $5 per property.
Lee: Wow! Now we’ve just done a virtual tour of the Real Estate Academy, and that virtual tour was living in this particular audio today. So people can have a look around the academy. It did just take us. The time it took us to walk around was the time it took us to walk around. And the camera will get some footage of that later on so people can see it. But this thing’s tiny.
Tom: Yes. It’s no different from a normal little pocket camera. Tell us about the device and how it works. So, the camera is probably half the size of your phone, so it’s really handy for a new one, especially for ladies. It fits nicely in a bag, it’s not bulky. It’s got two lenses on each side. Each one of them is 190 degrees. And when you take one photo, it actually takes two. But it allows them, the app to stitch them together in a full 360 view of the property. And it takes half a second to take one photo of a room. So it’s super fast. And while doing the photos of the property, it’ll eventually come down to how quickly you can walk through the property.
Lee: What I found interesting was you navigate and control, the whole camera off your phone so you can see what it is you’re setting the, the settings. So the app in your phone that’s connected to the camera controls it.
Tom: Yes.
Lee: What is the cost of the camera? Because we’ve heard some massive prices of these big cameras all over the world that it looks great, but outta budget, what is the camera like this? What’s the investment?
Tom: Yes, the initial investment is around $688 and that’s just not the camera. It also includes a tripod. Cause you need to put the camera on something to have it in the middle of the room. But if you do have your own tripod, the camera itself is $539. So, we think it’s really affordable for what it provides. The quality of the photos is around 7,000 pixels, which is massive. So, as you said, great quality for, property management or putting the property to the market. I designed this system to help with sales, but now it turns out it’s great for everything sales, property management, and reporting.
Lee: And about us. Like look at the, for the people that have never been to Real Estate Academy today, you would feel you’ve been to Real Estate Academy versus just some gloss photos on our website. So about the company, meet the team. And I purposely didn’t tell the girls we were walking around today. There was a couple of people out at lunch. It was a real live scenario of what that is. Yes. So the camera investment, we understand it’s very simple to use. The demonstration blew me away. It was like, is that it?
Tom: Yes, that is it.
Lee: You don’t have to be a university tech to actually work it and we’ll go to this next stage. How do you stitch them together and where do you host them?
Tom: Okay, so we as virtual tours creator, host those tools for you guys. So you don’t have to worry about anything. All you have to do is take the photos and then you upload them to our portal and connect them. Connect each room, with the other rooms using so-called hotspots, which are arrows that lets you click on them and then you can walk from room to room. So it’s really easy. Probably takes five minutes, to upload a free bedroom house and connect the dots. You can also add unlimited, number of info points. So if you’d like to emphasize anything in the property that’s I import or can’t be visible, like ducted and air conditioning or wooden floors. Cause sometimes from the photo you can’t tell whether it’s line or wood. You can add all that information in. You know, you can also add information such as how big is the fridge opening? And save yourself time on answering all those questions from, from tenants or buyers.
Lee: What’s really powerful about what you’re saying here is I truly believe the whole real estate sales process is about to be flipped over. It used to be people would ring you and say, when can I see it? Now I’ve done a virtual tour, I’ve checked out my fridge opening, I know I can renovate on the second story. I’ve been out in the backyard. I can see it’s dog friendly. I’ve looked at the fences. I’ve actually done a virtual true inspection cuz I could control dot click where I wanted to go. Now I’m gonna turn up and buy it. But I think there is so much more you can see and go back and see that that’s how you get the stickability to the property now. Whereas a flat photo won’t do that now.
Tom: And the main thing about virtual tours is they allow people to view the property from the point of view of themselves of what they want to see. Always when, you know, real estate agent or a photographer more importantly presents a property. It’s from their own perspective. So they will give you, you know, the best shot of the kitchen, but you won’t know what’s in front of that kitchen. And if there’s an ugly fireplace and you go to that open house, it eliminates that property anyway and it’s not gonna change anything. But if you’re going to give those buyers or tenants that information beforehand, they can prepare themselves. If they ugly the property, they will come as qualified buyers or tenants, and the best, I just got an example from a new customer, John Edwards, that, he listed his first property two-story house on the market with a virtual tour. And there was this one lady that said that she was not gonna come to the open house. For whatever reasons. When he sent her the virtual tours, she said she would come to the open house. And she came on Monday and after five minutes she said, I’m done. And he goes, oh well, you don’t like it. And she goes, no, I love it, but I’ve spent hours and hours with my whole family looking at this house over the weekend. So she came just to see that it existed. She was ready. She signed up the documents on Tuesday, she came back to the office. It was the quickest sale and inspection he ever did. Amazing!
Lee: What’s powerful about that is there’s something else going on here. Total control is what the consumer wants. They don’t want to have to ring 15 times to get every little answer that they want. And quite often you can’t get back through the property. So for example, if I’m buying a home, I want my builder to sit, not the building inspector, but the guy who’s gonna rip off the roof, put in the recording studio, the guy I trust and I wanna sit at home in front of mine in plasma and say, right in, let’s go down here. Look at that beam. Do you reckon we can remove that wall and look at this one? What about that wall?
Tom: Exactly.
Lee: So I can have a walkthrough of my builder in my own time. We can take notes at home and make those decisions. But I had another salesperson say to me, you know, Lee, the virtual tours, you think they’re up to the standard of the marketing for the type of homes we’re doing. And I said, it’s changed. People don’t want the gloss Botox video. They want the real video.Cuz that’s transparency that the drone works great and moving through, but just selling it to me. And what we’re trying to do now is move away from push marketing to pull marketing. And if we can pull them into every room, make a decision, it’s, it’s, I’m, I’m seeing the actual real thing here. It was done on a camera. That’s a real camera. I can make a real decision. And I think that’s a huge transition in our sales. Transparency. Transparency and, and what you just explained to us now gives us the steps. The camera. Okay, $500 or under $600, you’ve got the software to stitch it all together. It then is hosted. And when we say it’s hosted, it’s a certain type of file. What file is that?
Tom: It’s just a URL link that you simply copy and paste to your CRM or directly to real estate.com. Do au or domain or all homes, whatever you are using, that the same link can also help you with building up your online presence on social media. So we can copy and paste it to Facebook and use it for your social media advertising or just building content. And that will be much more engaging and interesting for people, than just photos or videos for that matter. So that’s another use of those virtual tours. And I just mentioned to you before that we have an agent, oh my goodness, somebody in Sydney. I just lost the name of the, Sam Dalby. He just did his first 360 auction recording Facebook. So this opens a whole new door for you guys and that cost you nothing because this camera can also, shoot 4K 360 videos and you pay zero for that. Even if you don’t use our software for creating virtual tours out of photos, you can make amazing engaging 360 videos.
Lee: Now, that video finally mentioned it was URL, but I can just cut and paste that, go to Facebook, and just post it. And that will sit and play on Facebook.
Tom: Well, no, it won’t play on Facebook. It’ll give you, the highlight and, and the thumbnail of the tour, but then it’s gonna take you out from Facebook just to where the tour is sitting.
Lee: Great. So the tour is on your site?
Tom: Yes.
Lee: Where they go through. We’ve also seen people putting your, let’s call it your technology in our Web Books now.
Tom: Yes.
Lee: So when we send out a Web Book, we’ve got the gallery, we’ve got the contracts, we’ve got the floor plans. Now the virtual torque can live in there. How does that work?
Tom: This is the most exciting thing. We just got integrated with Web Books. So all you need is the same link and you post it, in a Web Books backend where it says virtual tour, you just copy and paste it and that tour opens inside of the Web Book. So if you send, if you’re gonna send somebody a link to the Web Book and they’re gonna scroll through the listing of the property, you’re gonna have a little window opening up with the virtual tour inside of the WebBook.
Lee: That just shrink-wraps it all together.
The consumers got control. And I’m just, the more I interview the consumer, the more control they want, then they just want to purchase. The world has changed. An agent just ringing me all the time telling me information. It’s not the same as me having the information. I’m gonna have my lunch and do a virtual tour of the property and then I’ll get back to you. So we’re seeing that huge acceleration in how the consumer wants to consume the property content and information. Tom, how do our listeners watches get hold of you, and what do they need to do to get activated?
Tom: Oh, well, it’s as simple as going to virtualtourscreator.com.au or getting with touch with Lee or his academy. We can also just ring my mobile because we have full Australian support. That’s a very important thing for all of you guys. We’re gonna hold your hand and we’re gonna tell you exactly how to do it. We’re gonna train anyone in your office to be able to do it, whether property management or sales. Just find us on Facebook or just jump to our website and give us a call or send us an email and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
Lee: Tom, thank you for joining us.
Tom: Thank you very much, Lee.
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!
