360 Home Tour
360 Home Tour Software - Real Estate 360 Home Tour
Are you looking for virtual tour software? Where should you start your research process for the right 360 virtual tour software? What questions should you be asking the companies that you contact? And finally are you getting all of the facts that you will need to make an educated decision?
At RTV, we have all of the facts for you regarding 360 home tour, and 360 home tour software. As you compare virtual tour technology you should arm yourself with as many facts about the industry as possible. The more you know the better questions you will ask. Below are just a few pointers to help you get started.
The term 360 home tour has been left open to interpretation to the point that the term is open to just about anyone's understanding or definition. Two definitions found on Google using the exact same search phrase (define: 360 home tour) directly contradict each other. One states that a 360 home tour is any graphical representation of a property while the very next definition states that there should be a feeling of actually walking through the property.
There are a lot of misconceptions about 360 home tours. There are many people that even think that still pictures that fade in and out constitute a 360 home tour. I do not and neither should you. As technology evolves, the term 360 home tour should only be used when the experience is near equal to that of having actually physically visited the property.
With slide tours, you cannot get that type of tour. You are limited to the photographer's angle and you have no idea what the photographer may be hiding. With a true 360 home tour, you are allowed to see the entire property. Video tours are useful, but most 360 home tour providers either don't provide them or are ineffective at filming the entire property due to lighting differences.
Do-it-yourself (DIY) solutions are rarely, if ever, truly virtual in nature and most of the time cannot even be considered a 360 home tour of any kind. Most DIY 360 home tour solutions allow the end user to upload a set number of images and then use these images to display a moving (or sometimes even non-moving) graphical display of still images. Imagine being promised a 360 home tour of New York City only to find that the provider simply gave you five pictures that move left to right. I don’t see how you can classify five pictures as a ‘tour’. In reality it is nothing more than a slideshow. There is clearly nothing ‘virtual’ about a slideshow.
What’s even worse is that many DIY solution providers and some larger full service companies have even been as bold and misleading to the customer as to name the resulting graphical slide show presentation a Video Tour. These companies are not misleading and preying on unsuspecting real estate agents who then go out and scream to the world ‘I am now using the latest in technology’ while in reality there is nothing new at all about the slideshows that they are using. This damages the credibility of the 360 home tour industry overall. If they want to call it a video tour at least they could describe the underlying technology that is being used for the customer’s sake.
Then there’s the one-shot solutions out there. I have used this so called 360 home tour technology before. While the end result is a 360-degree panorama, the quality is horrible. The resulting images distort the property and make counter tops and walls look rounded. You cannot use the cameras flash to brighten particular portions of the room like you can with photo stitching software. You are unable to do 180 degree panoramas and must do an entire full 360 of every room. You’re left with blown out windows and white balance problems. Finally the resulting images from this dreaded technology are not printable for your client to use outside of the 360 home tours. A lot of low-quality providers use these solutions to present real estate and the result is a complete misrepresentation of the property.
Why would you purposely misrepresent a property by using a low quality 360 home tour? Why would you not want yourself and your properties to look the very best? Would you show up for to a listing presentation wearing sweat pants? It's pointless to throw money away like that. Seeing is believing and people do believe what they see. You may have had an interested buyer from across the country close your tour off their screen because they simply didn't prefer to buy a house with ‘rounded walls' and thought it looked too ‘futuristic'. Meanwhile, it could have been the perfect house. But, you will never know and they will never call. www.realtourvision.com technology utilizes optical correction on all of the images within the 360 home tours making sure every wall appears perfectly square and just as it would if you were there in person.
You have to keep in mind that 360 home tours are very effective marketing tools. If you have any doubts, go check out the 2006 NAR REALTOR Technology Survey and the 2006 NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. It is no secret that both home buyers and home sellers are now using the internet extensively and are much more technologically inclined than they were just 10 short years ago. It is definitely no secret that Buyers and Sellers demand more technology from real estate agents today than ever before.
Here are some other GREAT 360 home tour facts:
As of August 2006, just over half of American adult internet users (51%) have taken virtual tours of another location online, up from 45% in a previous Pew Internet & American Life Project survey in November 2004. (2006 Pew Internet & American Life Study)
24% of buyers in 2006 say they found the home that they purchased using 360 home tours on the internet compared to 2% in 1997. (National Association of Realtors Survey 2006)
88% of buyers who use the internet say that 360 home tours are useful in their search (National Association of Realtors Survey 2006)
Home sales are expected to top 7.7 million in 2007 (National Association of Realtors Survey)
95% of the tours on our servers are real estate virtual tours. These kinds of virtual tours are volume based tours and are great for showing a Real Estate listing. Our virtual tour providers love that we automatically create feeds here at RTV sending your virtual tours to many of the national portal sites.
Are you ready to start a virtual tour company? You need to select one of our many virtual tour kits.
360 Home Tour Builder Kits
RTV is the leading virtual tour company for high-quality 360 virtual tours on the Internet. Quality is ensured throughout the entire virtual tour building process while tour creation time is kept to a minimum. That's why our virtual tours are often preferred for virtual home tours, properties, colleges, long-term care facilities, the hospitality/lodging industry and businesses of all kinds.
The RTV virtual tour software system is truly a no-hassle solution for anyone serious about saving money on virtual tours or making substantial profits by creating the world's finest virtual tours. All of our 360 home tour products utilize our proprietary and up-to-date technology that is sure to impress a prospective buyer or a client of yours.
For information on becoming a Full Service Dealer or an In-house virtual tour provider, click the link that applies to you.
Start your own Virtual Tour Company
Virtual Tour Software for Agents
Lastly remember that one of the most important points to having a 360 home tour is that they should not be used solely to market a listing. They should be used to market YOU. One of the most important things you should have included in a listing package is a CD of one or more of your full-featured 360 home tours. Show prospective buyers HOW you are going to market their property before saying a word. Handing a prospective seller a package that includes brochures, marketing materials, DVDs and CDs says much more to a seller than any words you could ever speak. Handing them a full-featured INTERACTIVE 360 home tour puts you ahead of competition that has yet to figure out that their homemade video tour is nothing more than a slide show.
For more information on a 360 home tour and 360 home tour software visit www.realtourvision.com
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What's New In 360 Home Tour
- New Tour Window!
- New! RTV Audio Wrapper!
- Default Speed of Auto Play on Virtual Tours Increased!
- RTV Releases new Tour Track system
360 Home Tour Testimonials
Shirlee Smith
"I am so pleased with RTV Virtual Tour Software. I've found your support team to be great and exceptionally prompt on answering my questions." More...
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