Just over a year ago, as the world began to cope with COVID-19, the concept of virtual showings was probably a nice-to-have feature for most real estate or property management firms.
Home buyers and tenants could take a tour of a property without visiting it. They could look at the features of the home. Fine, but at the end of the day, who wants to part with so much money without seeing the real thing?
And, for the real estate firm? Too expensive? Difficult to produce? Only for luxury properties?
How much has changed since then!
The industry ramped up really quickly. Just ask Matterport, a leading provider of products for virtual showings. In the Boston area alone, the company saw a 65 percent increase in the use of its products in March 2020.
That’s a pretty dramatic increase. But, here’s the big question for real estate firms. After the pandemic, what’s in it for virtual showings?
We think there’s a strong case for taking it onboard as a permanent part of your service. So let’s look at why virtual showings matter — to you and to your clients.
And, we’ll show you how you can make successful showings a part of your daily work —without becoming a Hollywood producer.
Image via Matterport
Time to make virtual showings mainstream
It’s clear virtual showings are no longer a luxury. The pandemic has forced real estate firms to find alternatives to live viewings. Open house is out – for now at least.
But, what many firms have found is that there are real benefits beyond just meeting COVID restrictions. And, the more they use them, the more they gain.
We believe it’s essential for real estate firms to retain wide use of virtual showings and build them into mainstream marketing beyond the pandemic.
We’ll take a closer look at those benefits shortly, but first a step back. Where did this all come from?
The gentle rise of virtual showings
Go back around ten years and there were a few brave pioneers in the business. Virtual showings are the future, they claimed. But, most firms were not convinced and why should they be?
Business was good with traditional viewings and the technology was young — certainly a cut above home movies, but primarily something to impress wealthy clients.
And, there was even a feeling that virtual showings could threaten the industry. Who needs an agent when you can just send prospective buyers a movie? And, how can you create your own programs without hiring a crack production team?
But, when COVID-19 hit, realtors had no choice. It was adapted to survive. And, those figures we showed earlier demonstrate just how quickly the market changed.
Moving on to more recent times, sales volumes have dropped. No surprise there. But house prices have held up and that leaves the market in a reasonable state.
So have virtual showings made a difference and how have they helped the market survive?
A better experience for buyers and sellers
One of the biggest benefits of virtual showings is the viewing experience — it’s better for both buyers and sellers.
Here it is from the buyer’s perspective. You visit a property, but you can’t spend too much time there. And, you’ve got the pressure of the agent, guiding you and hoping for a quick decision. In the wrong property, it can be stressful.
Instead, turn on the virtual showing. You’ve got the opportunity to experience being in a property, but without time or agent pressure. Take your time, go back over the rooms you really like.
Check out some of those details that raised an eyebrow at the time. Not sure? Go over it again and again.
Okay, there might be a commentary to highlight all the plus points, but buyers can review the property without feeling someone is trying to guide their decisions.
And, if they are showing interest, buyers can spend more time assessing the property. They can keep revisiting to check on individual aspects. Get a second opinion and finally confirm their interest.
It’s the way we buy online, but we’re talking about much bigger tickets. And big money decisions need time.
Photo by Samantha Gades on Unsplash
A more relaxed approach
A virtual showing provides a more relaxed approach to assessing a property without pressure. And for the buyer who wants to visit a property to confirm their decision, they’re already familiar with the big picture. Now, they just want reassurance and you’re on the way to a sale.
Sellers have a better experience too. Showing a property can be stressful. Will they like? Are they serious? Should I have changed some things to make it look better? Is it safe?
With virtual showings, sellers have to deal with smaller numbers of informed visitors rather than large numbers of casual browsers. And, because of the continuing COVID risks, that factor is really important to older sellers.
Although virtual showings have increased in numbers, we don’t think they will completely replace live visits. What we see are people who are serious about arranging a follow-up live visit, when they can.
However, as Darren Robertson from Northern Virginia Home Pro commented, “Over time, as technologies continue, we expect sight-unseen offers to become more commonplace, even throughout fluctuations in supply and demand.”
But for now, we see the virtual tour as an integral part of the buying and selling process — one that creates a better experience for both parties.
A boost for business
The benefits don’t just affect clients — they can help your firm too. And, offering your clients a better experience is just one of the plus factors to virtual viewings – here are the others:
- Virtual showings can improve productivity. Think how long it takes your team to organize viewings and attend. Add in travel costs and you need to have a very high proportion of sales to visits to get a decent return.
- More free time to focus on the serious clients, and provide them with a higher level of service.
- The opportunity to expand your business by taking on more clients without needing to hire more staff.
- Clients could make decisions sooner. As we said earlier, they’ve got the chance to study the property in detail, over and over, before they even make a visit.
- Increases the chance of a definite sale. Matterport claims that properties sell 20 percent faster and close up to nine percent higher price with a Matterport 3D tour.
- Reaching a wider market of national or international buyers. Forget the restrictions of offering a local service. Geography is no longer a barrier when you can meet clients digitally and provide them with viewings that don’t involve expensive, time-consuming travel. And, those out-of-town clients will value your local knowledge to help them learn more about the area and make a better decision. It’s a win-win situation all round.
Overall, providing clients with virtual showings demonstrates your professionalism and gives your clients greater confidence in your service. That’s an important factor for buyers when it comes to choosing the agency for their property.
According to Matterport, 80 percent of property buyers and sellers would switch to a real estate agent offering immersive 3D tours of listed properties and that proportion is even higher among buyers in younger age groups.
With so many plus points, we think virtual showings should definitely be a major part of your marketing program — now and beyond the pandemic.
So, if we’ve convinced you, let’s put the show together and start growing your business.
Take a professional approach to virtual showings
There’s one big decision to make right at the beginning. Who makes the show: your team or a professional?
That used to be a no-brainer because equipment for the non-professional was limited, the process looked complicated and the results — they could be disappointing, or worse! Great if you had a video enthusiast on the team, but otherwise something to forget.
Forget all that. Today, we have powerful digital cameras or smartphones and easy-to-use software programs like Matterport that put production of virtual showings back in your own hands and make it easy to produce a quality virtual showing.
Okay, it’s unlikely to be the launch pad for a new career in television or the movies. But, you’ll be able to produce a program that your agency can be proud to put its name on — and a program that can boost your business.
Of course, great showings don’t happen automatically. You’ve got to take a careful approach to get the best results. We won’t go into step-by-step instructions here, because techniques vary between different equipment and software programs. But if you follow our guidelines, you can be confident of getting the result you want – a virtual showing that informs, persuades and sells — just like the best people on your sales team in fact.
And that’s not a bad analogy to follow. The best virtual showings act like the best sales agents, confident, professional and informed with a great personal touch.
Photo by Nathan Fertig on Unsplash
Plan the production carefully
Like most successful activities in the real estate business, making a great virtual showing depends on careful planning and attention to detail — and cooperation from the property owner.
Although it’s their property you’re aiming to sell, owners can be tricky to deal with, particularly if you identify something that could look bad to prospective buyers. Buyers might miss the problem on a quick personal viewing, but that could be risky when they can keep going back to check details. So, be prepared for some diplomatic negotiation.
First off, agree timing with the seller and go through the procedure with them. Explain why you need to have all the rooms looking clean and tidy. If there are any minor repairs or redecorating to do, encourage them to get the work completed before you shoot the program.
If you’ve got an agency checklist of points that help to sell a home, go through that with the seller. That helps them get involved in the process and will make your job easier when it’s time to shoot.
You must make sure the seller feels safe while you are in their home. So wear all the essential protective gear – face mask, gloves and covers for your shoes. And, if you’ve had the vaccine, mention that too.
When you’ve got the basic details of the property – layout, floor plans and elevations – plan a preliminary route to follow and highlight the rooms and spaces you think will be most important for the sale.
Make sure you get as much information as possible before your visit. Once you’ve captured the images, you will be adding a commentary. So, if you’ve got gaps in your knowledge, have a list of points to check and questions to ask.
Photo by Create a lifelike virtual showing
If you’ve carried out your planning effectively, you’re ready to shoot your program.
Remember, you’re not taking still photographs or short videos for traditional marketing material. You’re taking the potential buyer on a tour, a journey through their next home.
You’re inviting them to experience what it will feel like to be walking through the property, pausing to look at some details and imagining, “What if this was ours?”
So it’s important to shoot the content as if you were conducting a live viewing. Which route would you follow, what would you highlight or avoid, how would you describe what you are capturing on camera?
That makes it essential to create a ‘journey’ that a buyer would generally follow. Which rooms do buyers prioritize in your experience?
Use that insight to guide the buyer through the property in a logical sequence, starting from the entrance but then going to the most important rooms.
As the property will likely be empty, it’s useful to include furniture in the images to give the buyer a sense of scale.
You should also add interest by closing in on important details and providing information on them in your commentary.
Don’t forget to make notes of any of those important details. You will probably need them when it’s time to add the commentary.
When you’re putting together your commentary, imagine what you would say if you were showing a buyer round. That way it will sound more natural.
As Redfin agent Jill Thompson said, “During virtual showings, I become the eye of the buyer. I’m talking more than I would on a traditional tour, pointing out things that would be obvious in-person but aren’t so clear through a camera lens.”
Photo by Make more of the virtual showing
When you’ve completed your virtual showing, you’ll want to make the most of it, ensure it reaches the right people and moves prospects quickly towards a sale.
You can add more value for your clients by adding elements like a mortgage calculator and neighborhood details to the virtual showing.
One essential action – integrate the virtual showing with your other marketing materials, both general and property-specific. Add details of each virtual showing to your website on the property pages and on your ‘About us’ page.
If you have a company brochure, feature virtual showings on your services page and highlight the service in all of your property ads and your social media material.
Finally, don’t forget old-fashioned contact. When a prospect has viewed a virtual showing, take the opportunity to reinforce the viewing with a follow-up discussion.
That gives you the chance to take back control of the sales process.
Virtual showings for your business
Virtual showings proved their worth during the pandemic, but we strongly believe they will continue to play an important role for real estate firms as restrictions are listed.
It’s likely that prospects will still want to visit a property before committing to buy or rent, but there’s a small but growing number of cases where buyers move through the whole cycle online without a visit.
If that’s the future, it’s time you got onboard.