Real estate photos versus real estate test drives: homebuyers prefer?15821
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 WGAN FanClub Member Buffalo, New York |
GETMYVR private msg quote post Address this user | |
| So, if you were a home buyer which would you prefer. Really nice photos so you can see what the property is like inside and outside. Or a 3D virtual tour which is like a test drive of a property where you can really check it out. Please submit your answer below. |
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 WGAN FanClub Member Queensland, Australia |
Wingman private msg quote post Address this user | |
| I honestly believe a 3D tour is more than enough for a buyer. I would not even be so keen on watching videos as it seems they kind of telling you obvious .. showing some lifestyle which is quite personal and adults can figure it out themselves. However it is better to have photos because some buyers may not be confident with navigating a tour or may be even get sick from its motion. If I knew about Matterport 6 years ago when we sold our house for interstate relocation I would pay for it to sell it better. |
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Shawn_P private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @GETMYVR I have realtors ask for both. | ||
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WGAN Fan Club Member Buffalo, New York |
GETMYVR private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @Shawn_P and that's ideally exactly where we want to be at! You definitely need photos but it's only a two-dimensional product. 3D brings you inside and brings the space alive. Thank you for chiming in. | ||
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WGAN Fan Club Member Buffalo, New York |
GETMYVR private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @Wingman exactly and we can't always think about the lowest common denominator, certain metrics of the population do have difficulty navigating through virtual tours, but hopefully companies like matterport will help provide more navigation help, to make a virtual test drive of a real estate property more enjoyable. | ||
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Shawn_P private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @GETMYVR my experience with Matterport in the DFW area has been a mixed bag. A lot of realtors still do open houses or only want photos. Recently had a contact at a residential builder tell me to raise my price point on Matterport. He believes that consumers equate a higher price point with quality. Thoughts? |
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WGAN Fan Club Member Buffalo, New York |
GETMYVR private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @Shawn_P that's what I'm thinking... Except where I am, Open House runs one day a week for 2-3 hours... I just think most agents are completely missing the concept and conditioned to think that's enough for the consumer. | ||
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 WGAN FanCLUB Member Coeur d'Alene, Idaho |
lilnitsch private msg quote post Address this user | |
| I include at least a Zillow 3D home tour in addition to stills in my base pricing Matterport is an upgraded service as time on sight is longer and the costs associated with the tour. I believe educating agents on the pro's and cons of the different tours/services provided goes a long ways. I even offer aerial 360 tours on vacant land listings. Budget minded agents will often just opt for the basic Stills & Zillow 3D home tour option while I have several agents that go all in with Stills, Zillow 3D home tour, Matterport, Floor Plans, & Video |
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WGAN Fan Club Member Buffalo, New York |
GETMYVR private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @lilnitsch I totally agree. Maybe it's just best to provide all the options available, it is what it is, and let the agent decide since they are the customer, most of the time for real estate photos. | ||
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 WGAN Fan Club Member Gilroy, California |
Dataventurer private msg quote post Address this user | |
| I have an opinion on this based upon my research watching the analytics of hits on my 360 tours, videos, and page visits. But let me answer the question up front. Good and abundant photos are a must have! Second is a 360 tour, then a walk-through video. Home Hunter Mindset Think about the mindset of a person looking for a new home. They likely have limited time when they sit down at their computer to create a short-list of properties they want to see in-person. It may be a Thursday or Friday night and they know they might be lucky to cram 6 to 8 visits to homes during the weekend. Many new listings are posted on Thursdays and Fridays, so that's crunch time to see what properties are available to build that list. Bottom line point from this view: the goal is to view as many properties as possible in the time on the computer. Photos – Fast and Informative That's where photo galleries come in. Create a search based on your criteria, then begin going through the list. Pop open a property page and scan through the photo gallery. Sometimes the page displays all the photos in a thumbnail gallery so you can quickly see the condition of the house (like in the Zillow gallery). My local MLS does not have that page layout - there is one big frame at the top of the page and you must click an arrow to move through the photos, not a quick as the Zillow format. Most visitors can make their assessment within a few seconds - that's why photos are a must-have. If the photos don't capture interest, the other media won't be viewed. Once the photos qualify the property as "of interest", the next item I think a potential buyer would want to see is the floor plan. 360 Tours Then to the 360 tour for a “hands-on” look at the home. My Zillow 3D Home dashboard shows average time spent viewing 360 tours has been consistently around 45 seconds. For an average size house, that’s plenty of time to whip through a tour. I have spoken with some agents who think 360 tours are too hard to navigate. I think they are missing an opportunity to provide a resource to potential buyers who have the skills to navigate the 360 tours. Nuff said… Zillow doesn’t provide stats on video views. The Show and Tours platform does provide stats, but I have been intrigued with the very low views on the videos. And I mean a fraction of the 360 tour views. My Stats From a Recent Listing When I post a Zillow 3D tour to the Zillow platform, I watch the page views displayed on the Zillow listing page and then check on my Zillow 3D Home dashboard to see how many times the 360 tour was viewed. I set up a spreadsheet to track the traffic. I did this for several listings to see if there were trends. By the way, the Zillow page shows visits, not individual photo views. I confirmed that directly with a Zillow marketing manager after a local real estate photographer tried to claim the Zillow listing page wasn't getting that much traffic. That view number is for individual visits, including multiple hits from the same IP address (a repeat visit counts). Here is a spreadsheet clip from a recent project. The Zillow listing had already been active for a day when I posted the 360 tour, already showing 946 views at 6:30 p.m. By 11:14 p.m. when I checked again, view count had increased by 74. And the 3D tour view increased by 76, 103%. That got me thinking about why that might be….  Deep Dive Into Source of the Stats I didn’t create the single-page website until the next day, and the URL wasn’t added to the listing immediately on the local MLS service. When it was added, then the other real estate platforms could scrape the updated URL for the single page website with the photos, 360 tour, and video. At that point, the Zillow 360 tour could be viewed on the single-page website (Show and Tour platform) and not just on the Zillow listing page. So after a couple days, the numbers showing on the Zillow dashboard included views of the 360 tour not just on the Zillow site, but also from the single-page website. Real estate platforms other than Zillow, where people had access to the tour link on their sites, were generating some traffic that gets added to the Zillow 3D Home Dashboard stats. There is no way to know the details of what percentage of the hits on the Zillow tour are from the Zillow page and from other platforms. One thing that is known from the stats though – the 360 tour gets a fairly high ratio of traffic compared to the Zillow page views. I scanned over several other statistical records that I collected. The lowest percentage I saw for a point in time was 33%. Most of the other stats were in the 45-65% ratio range. Some Real Estate Platforms Don’t Display Off-Site Links Prominently One thing I noticed when I was accessing a property listing from various real estate sites: some platforms display a “virtual tour” icon prominently while other platforms bury the link way down the page. If you are a home hunter scanning through listings, you really have to be searching for additional media links to find a virtual tour or the link to a property website. There is a broad range of “visibility” for media links on the different real estate sites. I would guess that the real estate platforms want to keep your eyes on their page and not jump to another site to view media. In Zillow’s favor, they present the 360 tour right at the top of their photo carousel in second position. Video, on the other hand, is at the very bottom of the carousel and not very prominently presented… Final Thoughts You might wonder why I can justify spending all the time it takes to write up this analysis? Good question. First reason: I find a lot of purpose and satisfaction connecting people with resources. If I have some research or experience that could be helpful to other members, I enjoy sharing. Secondly, taking the time to lay out my thoughts in writing also helps me think through my marketing pitch. I find that when I have the opportunity to speak with someone (an agent) about this kind of media stuff, I have a greater confidence in communicating and persuading. |
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WGAN Fan Club Member Buffalo, New York |
GETMYVR private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @Dataventurer excellent deep dive on the stats, thanks! I agree with the pics, they are preeminent above everything. Today I was talking to one of my agents when I was shooting some photos, and she mentioned she's been 3 hours at an open house and had five people walk in. No offers from any of them. Typically open houses are on the weekend for about 3 hours either on a Saturday or a Sunday. She's one of my better customers who also gets the matterport 3D, and I gave her some interesting insights that I've developed. 1. Everyone's search query is different, but asking Google "homes for sale in Lewiston New York" just below the top two ads, are prominent links to the 3D tours that I shot! So the search engines do have a preferential for highlighting property with 3D virtual tours. 2. I told her to modify the description to let prospects know that a private one-on-one virtual tour open house is possible at any time via Zoom, and other virtual conferencing software that is widely available and free. We discussed how to create an appointment with a prospect, and set up a time that's convenient for them, and tour the home via the digital twin. People don't always have time to make it out to an open house and certainly if there's several properties that they want to hit within a very short period of time they have to pick and choose, and buyers might feel rushed, and bail out of a buying situation or delay it. Having the ability to show the house at any time in almost perfect form through the matterport digital twin is my strongest suggestion for. So taking the fact that Google which is the top search engine has preference and shows virtual tours above most other listings is important. Then having the ability to communicate in a description to a customer that you can tour this house one on one with the agent anytime and not just open house Sunday, can certainly open up new doors and opportunities in this condensed time construct and the problematic issues current open house protocols create. |
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