As a real estate agent, you have many jobs. You need to find buyers to purchase properties that you have listed, as well as help your pool of buyers find a home that matches their needs.
As an agent, you have access to many tools; however, one marketing tool that is often overlooked is the use of Virtual Tours. Apps, such as iStaging, helps make using Virtual Tours easy. Statistically speaking, properties that have virtual tours sell faster than those that do not have a virtual tour.
84% of home buyers begin their search for a home on the Internet, of those homes seen online, listings with virtual tours receive 50% more views.
So how can you use these stats to your advantage and sell more homes? Here are five benefits real estate agents can get from using virtual tours.
Virtual Tours Save You and Your Clients Time and Money
When a prospective buyer has the option to look at a virtual tour of a property, they’re able to view more houses, faster, without stepping foot into the home which means you and your buyers don’t have to take the time to physically visit each house until they’ve whittled their options down to the final few. Not only does this save time and travel expenses, but it’s also a major headache saver as well.
By utilizing virtual tours, you are helping to reduce the number of “must-see properties” and getting your client’s offer faster than viewing each property in person which will expedite them to the closing table. This could make the difference between getting a property under contract or possibly engaging in a costly bidding war.
Virtual Tours Help You Win Listings
When you are doing a listing presentation to prospective seller clients, you need to show how you’ll be marketing their property and why you are the listing agent that will help get them to the closing table, the quickest and with the highest offers.
Having virtual tours in your marketing and showcase repertoire, and being able to effectively explain why it’s so important to have and use them (as described in this article) as a way of attracting the best buyers, shows them you know what you’re doing and have the tools to do so, which gives them the confidence to award you their listing.
Virtual Tours Will Reach More Buyers
Virtual tours will expand your reach and help you to attract more buyers. Remote buyers, both international and those on the other side of the country, can view your listings without being local. It's also useful for older buyers, or those with disabilities that can't move freely, where a few steps would disqualify a listing. Virtual tours can tell you a lot about the property without stepping foot inside the home.
If the home that’s viewed via virtual tour isn't what the prospective buyers are looking for, they are still more likely to contact you to see if you have other homes that will work for them.
When you create a virtual tour, you also create a simple and shareable link, that can easily be spread from buyer to buyer, friend to friend, on social media, SMS or even a link or QR code on your business cards. This allows you to easily show off your VT listings to an exponentially expanded and engaged audience.
Increasing Your Closing Rates
According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), when made correctly, virtual tours dramatically increase a property’s chance of being sold. Research from NAR also discovered that property tours, when done correctly, can help buyers decide to purchase faster.
The truth is virtual tours help buyers make a decision to purchase a property. NAR states that 40% of buyers rank virtual tours as “very useful” when looking to purchase a home. Virtual Tours ranked higher than listing agent information and recently sold properties when asked what helped them in the buying process.
When buyers can take virtual tours of houses they are interested in, they are more likely to make an offer on the house, and faster. They do not need to go back two and three times to make sure they really like what they saw; they have already viewed the virtual tour a few times. This cuts down on the amount of time it takes to get a listing under contract and frees you up to work with other clients.
Virtual Tours Help to Brand You as a Client-Oriented Agent
Branding your business means constantly getting your name in front of prospective clients and in the way that you want to be seen. Virtual tours are one way that you can put yourself out there as a client-oriented agent. You are showing your clients that you dedicate your time and efforts into using the best technology and the most advantageous marketing tools available. Virtual tours exhibit to your clients that you’re willing to go out of your way for their convenience and overall experience.
Virtual tours also show that you can bring clients to the closing table faster. They allow you to reduce the amount of time you spend with each client before closing on a property as well as increasing the number of prospective buyers overall. Virtual tours help you to put your client’s needs above all else, overall.
Virtual Tours are one of the most successful ways to market your properties, and setting them up can be a quick and painless process when you’re using the right tools.
If you are interested in creating your own Virtual Tours for your listings, you can get started at iStaging.com for $5, and if you want to learn more here’s a quick video on how it works.
