A seller’s point of view:

Some time ago my wife and I put our home on the slow market. We were prepared to wait longer for it to sell. Our Realtor, who assisted us with the original home purchase, was chosen with utmost confidence to sell our home based upon his abilities. He told us his plan: to have photos taken and have a “Virtual Tour” done. Our Realtor quickly went to work posting our property on the local MLS with photos that he had taken from a simple point & shoot camera. The photos posted were washed out, had bad angles, and were simply of poor quality.

About a month went by and we had yet to see the virtual home tour on our property’s listing. So, I picked up the phone to inquire. I was assured again that it was coming and it would be posted within a couple of days. He was true to his word! A virtual tour link was added to the posting very quickly! I thought to myself “WOW, they must have come to do the shoot when I was at work. I was disappointed however to see the link was a slide show with the same boring low quality photos that were already on the listing. Aren’t Virtual Tours suppose to “walk” you through the house?

This story wouldn’t be such a big deal had we been getting showings of the house. ZERO in six weeks time! I took my camera and started to take pictures of our house. I later provided them to our Realtor which he eventually posted to the listing. Lo and behold, we started to get a few calls and that’s when it hit me!

I started a little photography business a couple of years ago doing small jobs by word of mouth, and for friends and family. This seemed like something to look into. I started doing research on adding a virtual tour service. One of the very first web sites that I found was Real Tour Vision. Over the next couple of weeks I researched different companies narrowing it down to 4. Real Tour Vision (RTV) was the first on the list. I spoke to a gentleman by the name of Jason LaVanture. Jason answered all my questions without hesitation and made sure that I was well informed about RTV.

The main thing that I liked most about RTV was they never said, “you can’t” or “you won’t be able to.” Instead they gave me a list of improvements that were coming to the virtual tour software. They encouraged me to talk to other RTV providers and see how they enjoyed it. After calling around to other RTV providers (both veteran and novice) and receiving great feedback, RTV earned my business and I became an RTV provider! During this time our property had not sold and after the contract was up we decided to find a new Realtor. My first Virtual Tour was our own home.

I provided this tour link to our new Realtor and within the first week we had 5 showings! That’s more showings than we had in 4 months with the “impostor” Virtual Tour. The showings began to increase and our house sold in 45 days! That was half the time that other properties were averaging in our area. Running a Tucson Virtual Tour Company using RTV is one of the best things I’ve ever done! From a consumer’s point of view there is no better way to market a home and there is no substitute for a Quality Virtual Tour.

In today’s market the Virtual Tour is expected by both the seller and the buyer. And I am proud to offer the best!

Jon McFarlin
RealViews360