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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!

If you’re selling a home where pets reside, keep in mind that your potential buyers might not share your same love of furry friends. And its important to not let little things like pet hair, litter odor, or anything get in the way of your sale! What can be done? I’d recommend two stages of clean up.

Stage 1:  The Photos. This is more light clean up. Be sure your pets are out of the pictures, vacuum couches if pet hair is visible, and set aside any visible signs of pets such as toys, food trays, etc.
Stage 2: The Open House. Now comes the deep cleaning.  Make sure you thoroughly vacuum every inch of your home. Anyone with pet allergies will instantly be able to tell there’s a pet in your home. Remove any visible signs of pets, including the pets themselves. Clean all linens, sheets, etc., anything that could collect hair and dander. Rent or borrow an air filter a few days before buyers arrive to remove allergens from the air.

Simple tips like these can make a world of difference to your buyers. Don’t overlook the details, and you’ll be on your way to SOLD.

1. Lighten up your subject – don’t take photos at night or try to use dramatic lighting. The clearer and the more professional looking, the better the photo.
2. More is better – take as many pictures as possible. The more you show, the more your buyer will feel better about wanting to see the house in person.
3. Get a clear shot - clean up your house or have it “staged” for the photos – clean area, no clutter, no trash outside, etc.
4. Go Pro – If you can’t seem to take great pictures on your own, consider using TourVista’s Professional Services.
5. Give it your best shot - borrow a friend’s camera or try to rent one from a local shop.
6. Edit – using Flickr or Photoshop to edit your photos can make a world of difference.

TourVista’s suggestion: When it comes to your virtual tours and Craiglist adds, do your touch-ups before your photo shoot! Don’t take pictures of a leaking gutter, hole in the wall, or missing woodwork from a door. Take the time and a little extra money to always make sure you’re putting your best home forward. A little love = a buyer loving your listing.

I don’t know the percentages but I’m guessing that 80%+ of prospective renters will use Craigslist exclusively in there search for a new home.  How do I know this?  Well, I’ve been renting out my condo in West Seattle each year for the past 4 years and every time I post the ad on Craigslist, I get a flood of emails from interested applicants.  I’ve never had to advertise my condo anywhere else.  

Looking Good On Craigslist is Essential

The bad news is that most other landlords & property managers also know about Craigslist.  In fact, it’s not uncommon for me to post my condo to Craigslist and within 20 minutes, it will already be on page 2 of the results in Seattle!  That’s crazy, I know.  So, your posting needs to look professional if it’s going to stand out.  This also goes for your photos — they’ve gotta look great.  Craigslist even has a search filter to skip ads that don’t include photos and I’m sure that many searchers use this — I mean, what good is an ad for an apartment or house if it doesn’t show any pictures?

You say: “So how come my awesome looking photos are all blurry once I upload them to Craigslist?”

I respond: “Because Craigslist shrinks your photos to fit their template and to load very fast.  This reduces their quality significantly and can often times result in blurry, messy looking photos.”

Check out this example from one of TourVista’s clients:

Original Photo Looks Great	Craigslist Photo Looks Blurry

There are the actual photos, no Photoshopping or anything like that.  Craigslist really nukes your original pix.

The good news is that you can still get your photos looking AMAZING on Craigslist! 

Just use TourVista’s Craigslist templates to create your ad and your photos will look so much better.  The trick is that when you use our Craigslist templates, you upload the photos to TourVista.com, not Craigslist.org, and we don’t reduce the quality.  Your ads pull the photos from your account at TourVista.com and that’s how your photos maintain their original high quality.

‘Nuff said! Give TourVista a spin and try out our Craigslist templates.  They will save you time, make your ads look so much better, and give prospective tenants a great first impression of your property.  Click the image below to get started.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million
Online videos for marketing real estate make sense because video provides more information than photos alone. Photos show the quality and craftsmanship of a home, but there is no connectivity between the rooms. The buyer has no idea where they are when looking at photos, and is left to guess how the rooms relate to each other. The overall “flow” and feeling of the home is missing in photos alone.

A video walk through provides the buyer with the sense that they are actually walking through the home. It is a continuous experience that simulates what it feels like to tour the home in person. Video tells a better story about the layout and connectivity of a home by providing a more interactive and informative viewing experience.

Video is good, but something is missing
What’s missing is a viewer-controlled navigation or “map” that allows the buyer to see the layout of the home and provides the ability to jump to any scene in the video. Without this map, navigating a 2-4 minute video of an unfamiliar home can be quite awkward. Unless one is paying very close attention during the entire video, it’s easy to get lost.

It’s also difficult to navigate a video using the time bar. Imagine watching a video of the perfect home, and wanting to show the kitchen scene to another person. How does one know where the kitchen scene begins in the video? Individual scenes must be manually located by dragging the time bar back and forth, a tedious process.

The Interactive Floor Plan Saves the Day
Both problems of getting lost and jumping to a specific scene in the video are solved when using an interactive floor plan. The floor plan graphic “lights up” to show the buyer the current room as shown in the video. A quick glance at the highlighted section of the floor plan orients the buyer and improves the touring experience.

Additionally, buyers can jump to any scene in the video tour by clicking on the interactive floor plan. Buyers take control of their video tour experience, seeing the specific rooms of the home in their desired order. One can jump from the master bedroom to the kitchen and then out to the back yard, all with a few clicks of the mouse.

Online real estate shopping has never been easier nor has it provided the audience with as much information as contained in a video tour with interactive floor plans.

View a video tour with an interactive floor plan and experience the difference compared to a regular listing of just photos or video alone.

This is obviously a tricky question and a matter of much debate today. Which is better for showing potential customers an online preview of a home: photos or video? As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Both have some strong arguments for and against, and at the moment I believe the correct answer is that it comes down to personal preference.

Let’s examine Photography.

For marketing homes online, it’s hard to go wrong with some quality photos from the best angles of the home. Some of the main advantages of photos are:

• You get high resolution for the relatively small file size.
• The digital photo output is easily manipulated for the web and rarely needs much editing.
• Cameras have been around for awhile now. Remember blowing on the film that came out of your Polaroid or when you got your first Kodak? If you choose photos to create your tour, odds are you are much more likely to be able to shoot some great shots on your own than if you choose to create your own video. Bob Sagat might like your home video, but I’m not sure potential buyers out there will.
• Affordability and high quality of a professional photographer. There’s been a need for professional photography for a long time, they are much easier to find than professional videographers.
• Digital cameras are abundant and affordable. If you don’t already own a decent one, it’s not hard to get your hands on a good one, and you know professional photographers will be equipped with some of the best!

Nevertheless, still photography has some major shortcomings when showing off a property. We’re not talking about showing images of artwork or sweeping views of beautiful landscapes. Home shoppers want to find out as much as they can about the honest truth of a home before dedicating their time to viewing it in person.

• Photos are static, stationary. One photo will give you one view. But rooms have many views from many angles you would have to supply several photos per room to accomplish what video can.
• Sometimes a photo of a room can feel misleading or distorted. Haven’t we all seen the photos with a nice telescopic or wide angle lens that shows some grand living room or entryway, only to arrive in person and wonder where the home we looked at online has gone? In order to effectively market properties there is a need to show them in the best light to entice viewers, but beware of manipulating or deceiving potential customers to get them in the door. This can foster resentment and ill will and ultimately lose the sale.
• Depending on your choice of equipment, angle, and number of photos per room, there’s only so much that you can effectively show with photos.
• Professional photographers can be overpriced. I’ve seen amazingly detailed, beautiful photos created by some photographers, but they can charge over $300 for their real estate shoots. With the quality you can get these days using your own affordable personal equipment, it’s hard to justify spending that kind of money per shoot. Why not do it yourself? My mom is creating a website using her iMac and it looks like she paid someone $3,000 to build the site, create the media, and weave it all in to a great looking site. The tools are out there today for us to grab hold of and do it ourselves including digital photography!

Let’s take a look at what video has to offer.

Using video to show a home online has some inherent advantages over photos, but it’s still in its infancy on the web. People are continually becoming more comfortable with what video has to offer them on the internet. This is clearly illustrated by the explosion in numbers of users of sites like YouTube.

We are a society that grew up around television and we know that video on the internet, like TV before it, can give us much more information in a shorter period of time than still photos or plain text you’d find in newspapers, magazines, and books. Here are some major reasons for using video:

• A video tour more closely shows the images of the way we would see them in person. We move through the home walking and turning our heads, we don’t stand in the middle and spin around, or go from room to room opening our eyes, taking a peak, closing our eyes, moving the next and opening them again.
• Multiple continuous angles and perspectives of each room – not just one or two.
• A more honest reflection of what the home looks like if you were there in person. It’s much harder to hide or conceal with moving video images with photos you can easily show only the angles & views you want.
• More information! Video can capture 30 frames per second, so after 5 minutes (600 seconds) video will give users 18,000 images! A video walk-through gives us a similar feeling to being there in person.

Some major drawbacks exist today in terms of video quality being played back on the web. Some people are still using dial-up to access the internet.  It doesn’t make sense for these people to download a 5 minute video that could take hours!

• Thanks to much more data being packed into a video file, it has to be compressed significantly in order to be effectively broadcast on the internet. Much of the quality is lost in this process.
• It can be difficult to create a high quality video due to the simple fact that you are moving. There are many devices out there that can help stability, but this is a major concern. Viewers don’t want to watch your own personal Blair Witch horror flick!
• Video can be more expensive. Typically the tools required to shoot a high-end video are more costly than what can be acquired for photography. A high-end HD digital camcorder along with stabilizing equipment can easily cost over $2,000.
• Video editing skills are usually required. It’s tricky to shoot a great video walk-through on your first try. Either due to awkward moments or a not so graceful step or even backtracking across a room you’ve already shown there are many reasons to want to edit your video. And this takes some practice!
• Real estate videography professionals can be very hard to find in your area. Wedding videographers are more readily accessible, but have they gotten on board with shooting real estate video tours yet?

Right now it’s clear that if you get a fuzzy, wobbly tour that takes too long to download, viewers won’t watch your video. Pictures don’t have this worry. They load so fast that a viewer can easily browse 10-20 in a matter of seconds.

However, if video can overcome its issues of quality and size then I think it is clearly the better medium to showcase your home to buyers who are viewing online. Whether that day has come or not is up to you to decide, but as internet capacity expands, memory cards hold more data, high-quality camcorders become more accessible, and high-speed internet more commonplace, video is poised to take online real estate marketing to the next level.