Always Hire a Professional Real Estate Photographer!

March 13, 2018

professional-real-estate-photographyAll too often I see properties listed with pictures that were either taken from a cheap camera or, heaven forbid, a cell phone. I can not stress how incredibly important it is when selling your home to have professional photography. Whether you are listing it For Sale By Owner or with an agent make sure you get professional real estate photography. If you choose to list your house with a real estate agent you should require them to hire a professional photographer that specializes in real estate photography. I would even go as for to say that if your agent is not willing to take on that marketing cost for you it’s time for you to interview a different agent to assist you in selling your home. It’s not 1999 anymore and over the last dozen or so years it has been statistically proven without a doubt that professional real estate photos not only make homes sell faster, but for more money too. Try googling it for yourself and do three minutes of homework here. Try searching for “Professional Real Estate Photography Statistics” It is such a popular search phrase that Google will likely finish it off for you. After only three to five minutes of reading you will see some hard-hitting statistics that have been put out by companies like Redfin, Zillow, Realtor.com and more. The facts are the facts here.

The two key components to successfully selling a home is Pricing and Marketing. Pricing is first for a reason, no matter how good the pictures are if it is overpriced you WILL sit on it and end up taking less for the property than if you had priced it right. Moreover, when marketing your home, you have to have top-notch real estate photography as this will be every potential buyer’s first impression of the house and quite often be the deciding factor on whether they will set up a showing.

Now with all that being said I always hire a professional Traverse City real estate photography team for all my listings. The team over at BlueLaVaMedia does a superb job for not only myself but just about every agent in our office. Just for clarification, I pay for all of my listings photography, drone shoots, virtual tours and interactive media out of my pocket, and this is a cost I absorb even if for some reason your home does not sell.

To wrap things up if you are in the market for a new home or need to sell yours, please feel free to reach out to me. All of my contact information can be found on my Traverse City Real Estate Website. If you liked my article and found my real estate photography statistics useful please be sure to come on over and sign up for more of my articles in my Traverse City Realtor Blog.

Thanks!

Dereck Dykes
Century 21 Northland
Traverse City Real Estate Agent
231-714-0627

The IMAGE 60 – Tour Track 2018

February 2, 2018

National Photography ServiceDo you have what it takes to shoot a high end assisted care center, a five-star hotel or an entire apartment complex? Are your friends, family and customers wooing over your photos and drone videos? Do you have your 107 drone certification with the FAA and are ready to monetize that by aligning yourself with a national drone service company? Are you a good communicator that can follow instructions? If you said yes to several of these, you are likely a perfect match for Real Tour Vision’s Tour Track team. Tour Track is a national photography service.

Those of you that are already on the team are likely to have already seen the increased chatter regarding RTV’s national accounts. You have also been receiving more jobs over the last couple of years than ever before from RTV. With a larger Tour Track sales staff here at our global headquarters, we have been securing an increasing number of national accounts. Nearly two thousand jobs were completed last year, and RTV’s job payouts remain some of the highest among Google Certified Photography Agencies. We are not only securing more accounts and teeing up more jobs for our Tour Track team, but we’re also once again taking strides to make the shoot and deliver process even easier for you. This year we are pleased to announce that we have brought on scheduling support for your Tour Track jobs which makes the job completion process SO MUCH EASIER!

We will be discussing all this and more on our up and coming Tour Track 2018 webinar. Please join Jason Stringham, Beth Nixon and Bobbi Jo Lawrence on Tuesday February 27th at 7:00 PM Eastern for a full one-hour discussion on what’s new with Google photos shoots, RTV’s T4 program and up and coming Tour Track shoots and processes. See you there team!

Those of you that are new to Real Tour Vision and our Tour Track program please visit our Tour Track Orientation page prior to the show – https://www.realtourvision.com/tour-track-info-orientation.html

 

Register Here: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7447741410847624707

Sincerely,

Team RTV

Hotel Photography & Professional Virtual Tours

866-947-8687

 

The FORMULA 83- Become a Virtual Staging Expert

January 31, 2018

Virtual Staging WebinarMaybe you’ve heard of virtual staging on the real estate photography boards and thought it was something you should add to your virtual tour business. Perhaps you have not started offering this yet because you simply don’t have time in your busy schedule to learn a new piece of software. Whatever the reason the time to get started with Virtual Staging is now and we are pleased to offer a one hour virtual staging training webinar on Tuesday February 20th at 7:00 PM Eastern. Please join us on the live event and learn how to become a virtual staging expert!

REGISTER NOW – https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8668201516552871682

We will have guest speaker Julie Carpenter joining us on the show. Julie has staged several hundred photos over the past several years using Real Tour Vision’s virtual staging software system! She will be showing some insider tips and tricks that are sure to save you time and make the training process very easy on new up and coming virtual stagers. Additionally, she will be going through the virtual staging process from start to finish for those who are new to virtual staging.

Before attending the show please make sure you have already setup a virtual staging software account – https://stager.virtualhousestaging.com/signup

Whether you are new to virtual staging or you have staged dozens of homes we are confident that you will learn something on this show.

Click the link above to register for the live event and we look forward to seeing you there!

RTV, Inc

www.RealTourVision.com

Virtual Tours & Virtual House Staging

Order a virtual tour- 866-947-8687

Fusion Experience HTML 5 & RTV News

January 24, 2018

Great news Real Tour Vision fans; the all new HTML 5 Fusion Experience virtual tour player is here. Say hello to this responsive, fast loading, incredibly attractive, versatile tour player launched by Real Tour Vision virtual tour software company at the end of last year. We are still programming in the finishing touches, but if you have not taken the new Fusion Experience player for a ‘spin’ you should give it a try. Those of you looking for a game changer this year, here it is! Jim Blue and I soft launched this here in Traverse City, MI via phones, tablets and desktop computers and the consensus is that our new Fusion Experience player is the nicest interface they had ever seen and used. Your customers are in for a techy treat!

The team worked very hard last year to take both of our Flash-based interactive virtual tour players and convert them to HTML 5. We have done that and added several improvements along the way. As of right now you can deliver your virtual tour URL’s in HTML 5 to your customers right from your RTV Tour Manager. Watch this video message from Jason LaVanture, RTV’s Co-Founder and VP – https://youtu.be/dadYhjLaxpQ

Take a look at some of these virtual tour productions on display in Fusion Experience –

Fusion Experience – Custom Loader Screen – https://fusion.realtourvision.com/420405?html5=1

Fusion Experience – Custom Theme, Aerial Drone Video – http://fusion.realtourvision.com/218874?html5=1

Fusion Slim – Seamless Matterport Integration – https://fusion.realtourvision.com/605315?html5=1

We are very excited for you to make use of the advanced features that Fusion Experience brings to the table such as custom themes and loader screens without enduring the slower load times that are associated with the Flash version. When it comes to HTML 5 virtual tour players, we are ahead of the curve and leading the way!

Additional Announcements & News

Come to the show! – Tuesday January 30th at 7:00 PM Eastern. https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/7988465835855995394 This will be our first FORMULA episode of 2018, and we will be covering lots of the new updates and what these exciting features do! Read more by clicking on the registration link above.

Tour Credit Increase – Effective February 1st of 2018 virtual tour credits will be $12.00 each, and we will be saying goodbye to the $10.00 tour credit. We are happy to have been able to keep our tour credits to a mere ten dollars for the last 18 years, however with a great desire to continue our rapid programming and development pace a slight increase is needed. We truly appreciate your continued support and dedication to our brand.  In return we are committed to keeping our virtual tour technology ahead of the curve offering you the very best that is out there.  Additionally we are proud to announce to you that we have increased our virtual tour image limit for you so each virtual tour can now hold up to 100 images. Finally, the posting of your virtual tours to Realtor.com will be free of charge when these changes go into effect on February 1st.  

Thanks for your continued support everyone and we’ll see you on the next webinar!

Sincerely,

Team RTV

Virtual Tour Software & National Photography Services

Order a virtual tour – 866-947-8687

 

The FORMULA 82 – Fusion Updates 2018

January 17, 2018

You have likely seen new features and buttons appearing in the Fusion virtual tour system,  maybe you have even seen update messages rolling across your Facebook newsfeed over the past several months. At the end of the day, there’s just way too much going on with your business, your life and everything else to keep up with our steady battery of virtual tour software updates over here at RTV. What you need is a one-hour, laser-focused webinar on all these updates and improvements so you are ready to make any necessary changes and announcements for your business before the busy season.  

Please join us on Tuesday, January 30th at 7:00 PM Eastern for The FORMULA 82 – Fusion Updates 2018.  During the show, I’ll take you through the Fusion virtual tour system and point out some of the significant updates and improvements of 2017 and thus far in 2018.

During the event, we will discuss the differences between our HTML 5 Fusion Experience Player and HTML 5 Fusion Slim players. We will also discuss the new Media Gallery, 3D VR Headset Tours, the RTV video Ripper, RTV’s Tour Shredder, Secure, MyBrand & HTML 5 Delivery Links, Triple Action Floor Plans, Tour Track enhancements, our new www.RockPointeMarketing.com site and more! 

See you there RTV! Register here – https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/7988465835855995394

Jason