We’ve heard from a few users that they would prefer a more obvious way to view full size versions of the photos and floor plans on their virtual tours. 

Ask and you shall receive!

The two screenshots above show (on the left) the Photos tab for an interactive floor plan and (on the right) the lightbox for viewing each photo at full size.  

Tip: once the lightbox is showing, you can use the left/right arrow keys on your keyboard to quickly scroll through the photos.

Just visit one of your virtual tours and you’ll see that the lightbox has already been applied*.

* This update applies to Premium tours only, not free tours.

Hi, if you are wondering why your credit card statement has something like this:

TOURVISTA. 7700 EASTPORT PARKWAY

or this:

POS Withdrawal TOURVISTA. 7700 EASTPORT PARKWAY 8662391252 WAUS

or this:

It is because your credit card was billed by PayPal.  If your statement shows TOURVISTA (like above), you are being billed for an account at TourVista.com

Update March 2013: Please note, many companies use PayPal for processing credit card payments.  We’ve been getting a lot of calls from people because they Google 7700 Eastport Parkway and think that TourVista is charging their card, when it’s actually a legit charge by another company.  Call the phone number that shows on your credit card statement next to the charge.  Hope this helps!

In case you are wondering, the 7700 Eastport Parkway is an address associated with PayPal, which we use to process credit card transactions.  We’re based in sunny ol’ Seattle, Washington

Please contact us if you have any questions or would like to stop receiving these charges (which of course will cancel your TourVista.com account).

Have a nice day!

We love our Macs. But occasionally a funky bug pops up. Fortunately, there’s usually a helpful explanation online that shows you a good work-around.

This video demos how to get past the “Error 1 – Operation Not Permitted” error that occurs when trying to unzip a zip file created at TourVista.com.

The solution is to use Terminal, a built-in program on the Mac.

1. Open Terminal.  You can use the Mac search at the top right and start typing Terminal.  It will appear, click on it to open the program.
2. Type “unzip” and a space, then drag/drop the zip file into the Terminal window. 
3. Press Enter and the zip file will be unzipped, storing all files on your computer.

Your unzipped files will go to your user account folder which you can easily access using Finder.

If you have more than one online virtual tour in your TourVista account, these tours will be shown down the left side of your virtual tour’s dedicated web page in a section titled “My Other Virtual Tours”. While this is helpful in getting extra traffic to your other listings, sometimes it would be better to not display this list. For example, perhaps your MLS requires that no other listings are shown on your online marketing.

Here’s how to hide the links to your other virtual tours.

1. Sign in to your TourVista account.
2. From the My Virtual Tours tab, click on the address of the tour that you want to edit.  This will load the details page.
3. At the bottom left, below the map, you will see a section for Other Settings. Mark the checkbox for “Do not show my other tours on this virtual tour’s dedicated web page”
4. Click Save.

That’s it!  Now, when someone visits your dedicated web page for this virtual tour, the other tours in your account will no longer show.

Special thanks to Charlene of Indiana for this suggestion!

TourVista also offers additional customization of what shows and what doesn’t show on your virtual tours.  See this blog post for examples, such as making your virtual tours non-branded and MLS compliant.

Really want to make your home stand out from all the other ordinary real estate marketing websites?  TourVista’s interactive floor plans let your viewers navigate themselves through your home.  Combined with photos, interactive floor plans give viewers the information they are wanting from an online tour.

Viewers of your interactive floor plan can see exactly where each photo was taken as they tour your property online. (click to view)

Interactive floor plans are especially helpful for out-of-area prospects because they may not have an opportunity to view the home in person before making a buying or renting decision.  Put yourself in their shoes for a second:

You’re moving to a new city and looking for a home online. Sure, you will be visiting in a few weeks and have scheduled time with your local real estate agent to view a limited number of properties. Obviously, you want to only spend your limited time looking at homes that are a good fit for you. TourVista’s interactive floor plans provide huge value to you because you can learn so much more about a home than just viewing photos.

Your prospects have a limited amount of time when it comes to shopping for a home – there’s only so many homes a person can look at both online and in person.  They have to discern which homes they can dedicate this time to…make sure they pick your home to look at online.

Many sellers and landlords make the mistake of providing too few or too little information, but this can increase the chance they’ll just skip right past these homes for fear they will be wasting their time and effort in an in-person trip.  Unless this home is the least expensive in the best neighborhood – not providing enough quality pictures or video will lose you viewers and leads.  These days all homes are online on this website or that one – so you will need every way you can to make a great first impression on a potential buyer/renter.  Showcasing your home with TourVista gives you this edge.

Not only do interactive floor plans give you an edge online, but they also give you pre-qualified/screened customers when they schedule an in-person visit.  They already have a good idea of what the home will offer them and if they are ready to take a trip there in person then you know they are interested!  This will save you a lot of time in the long run.

Providing more information, like interactive floor plans, at the beginning of the home search process helps you reach out to more customers and gets them excited about your home!  It also gives you hotter leads when they come visit the home in person.

So, how do you setup an interactive floor plan for your home?

It’s easy.  Just create a virtual tour on TourVista, upload your photos and simple floor plan graphics and use our custom technology to “drag & drop” arrows onto your floor plan for each photo.  It takes about 2 minutes to build your interactive floor plan (and it’s actually kinda fun!).  

But what if I don’t already have a floor plan graphic?  How do I make one?

We agree, this is the most time consuming part of creating your interactive floor plan.  If you don’t already have a floor plan graphic, you’ll need to make one.  Check out this tutorial which demonstrates building a floor plan using Photoshop.  There are also a few websites that let you draw floor plans using your mouse.  Or you can hire us and our graphic designers will turn your sketch or blueprint into a beautiful floor plan graphic that’s ready for an interactive floor plan.

IE9 Breaks Websites

OK, perhaps a slight exaggeration in the title to this post, but it’s not unusual for a Microsoft product to have bugs.  Their newest release of the-growing-ever-unpopular web browser Internet Explorer 9 was breaking TourVista’s coolest technology: the ability to drag and drop your tour content.  Thanks to a few of our users who contacted us to report this issue.  

We’re glad to report that we’ve made the necessary updates so that TourVista is fully compatible with Internet Explorer 9 (aka IE9). You can go back to dragging and dropping your photos and arrows onto the interactive floor plans you create with TourVista.  :)

PS. thanks to IE9 as it provides great job security for website developers!

Selling your home in a community ran by a Homeowners Association can be tricky. Many new home owners are unaware of the intricate rules of the association, and that each association can have their own rules and bi-laws. The property value of the home you're selling will more than likely be increased by the fact that you belong to a HOA, from well-kept landscaping, gated area, or the like; but that increase came with a price = DUES. The value of the property might be higher, but the cost of living there is now even higher for your potential buyers because of the dues. When pricing your home for sale, take into account any dues the new home owners will have to be paying in your stead. But you can also use your HOA as a selling point, explaining that the kept lawns, safe playgrounds, and friendly neighborhood is what's to be gained from a minimal yearly contribution.

You can see more helpful home selling tips on our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/tourvista

TourVista
http://www.tourvista.com/
1-866-239-1252

A new addition to TourVista’s apartment websites are these local info icons that show over here on the side bar. The user is able to click on these icons and link out to the appropriate websites. And let me show you how, as the administrator, you can control which icons show and which links they go to.

So, when you log into your website, you’ll see a new section at the bottom left called Website Settings. Right now there’s one tab for local info. So, these will be which icons show. You can see, there’s six of them right here and they’re all showing as default. Click the drop down menu to hide any one of the icons you wish not to show. Then save changes. It’s that easy to determine which ones will show and which ones do not show. And then, if you also want to change the link, by default we have pre-populated a link for each icon. But, you can override that. To do so, click the drop down menu of the icon you’d like to change, and select Custom URL. Lower on the page with the corresponding icon name, there will be a space for you to type in the custom URL of your choice. Return to your website to test. Piece of cake!

MSN.com announces The 10 Best Neighborhoods to live in for 2011

Did your neighborhood make the list?

• Highland Park, Birmingham, Ala. The neighborhood was chosen for its public spaces, location, mix of land uses and diversity of housing. “We have everything from apartments that are $400 a month to $1 million houses,” Alison Glascock, president of the Highland Park Neighborhood Association, said in The Birmingham News.
• Northbrae, Berkeley, Calif. The APA noted the views of San Francisco Bay, plus Northbrae’s “garden suburb design with streets and footpaths that follow the contour of the hills.”  ”In some neighborhoods, people come home and all you see is their garage door close,” Jeff Dutton, who has lived in the neighborhood 40 years, told The Daily Californian. “I take the time to talk. It’s friendly.”
• Ansley Park, Atlanta. The 275-acre neighborhood was designed so no home is more than a 10-minute walk from one of the 14 parks.
• Pullman, Chicago. The development was built more than 100 years ago by George Pullman, the railroad-car maker, for the company’s workers. “When you are in Pullman, you know it,” Michael Shymanski, president of the Historic Pullman Foundation, told the Chicago Tribune. “It has a very strong sense of place, and the architecture and design helps reinforce the sense of place.”
• Gold Coast and Hamburg Historic District, Davenport, Iowa. The homes were built in the late 1800s overlooking the Mississippi River. The neighborhood had fallen into disrepair but has been brought back in recent decades through the work of its residents. The award shows “what a few people with a vision can accomplish,” Bill Boom, the alderman who represents the area, told The Quad City Times.
• Hattiesburg Historic Neighborhood, Hattiesburg, Miss. “Everyone is their brother’s keepers,” Red Bailey, a former Hattiesburg City Councilman, told the Hattiesburg American. “The neighborhood was built on that type of foundation.”
• Dundee Memorial Park, Omaha, Neb. This neighborhood was an early suburb, built at the end of a streetcar line.
• German Village, Columbus, Ohio. Neighborhood of brick streets and homes from the mid-1800s.
• Swan Lake, Tulsa, Okla. This area, where most of the homes were built in the 1920s and 1930s, is popular because of the diversity of its homes and its convenience. “It’s walkable, very diverse,” said Swan Lake resident Jim Turner, a member of the Tulsa Preservation Commission, in the Tulsa World. “There’s a wide range of housing values, wide range of architecture.”
• College Hill, Providence, R.I. This historic neighborhood near Brown University dates to the 1600s. Preservationists saved the area from demolition in the 1950s.