Owing to the Covid 19 pandemic, real estate developers, have had to find new ways to carry out their businesses; Hence the birth of Virtual tours.
virtual tour is a simulation of an existing location, usually composed of a sequence of videos or still images. It may also use other multimedia elements such as sound effects, music, narration, and text. Simply put, a virtual tour is a full-motion video of a location.
Virtual tours can be traced back to 1994. The first example of a virtual tour was a museum visitor interpretive tour, consisting of a ‘walk-through’ of a 3D reconstruction of Dudley Castle in England as it was in 1550. So, virtual tours have been around for a very long time but because of the see-believe nature of humans, virtual tours have been in the background up till early 2020.
What prompted the popularity of Virtual tours in the year 2020 was the outbreak of the Coronavirus. A lot of sectors sought out new ways to show up without being physically present not exempting the real estate sector. In fact, virtual tours have been most useful to the real estate industry as it has rapidly replaced routine inspections.
However, a lot of real estate investors are yet to get the right perspective on virtual tours which has, in turn, marred the experience for potential buyers. Here are five tips that can help get a hang of virtual tours.
1. Choose the Right Equipment & Software: One of the reasons many agents avoid virtual tours is that they imagine they would be needing complicated, top-notch photography equipment. This is not necessarily true as the only needed equipment is a panoramic or 360-degree camera, which is usually affordable and user-friendly. The most important thing is to always ensure that your equipment is in perfect condition.
2. Plan Your Shots: Draw a plan of what you want your virtual tour to look like and make a list of every room in the house that you want to include in your virtual tour. Check each room and find where the camera can be perfectly placed, a place where your camera will pick up the most detail and mark the spot. As you shoot, you tick.
3. Choose the perfect shooting time: The best time to make shoot a virtual tour is when there is perfect lighting. At noon-time, you will have the most light, but this might make your images look blown out (with lots of white light in the image) so, the best time to take your property virtual tours photography is by evening when the light is warm and of better quality.
4. Create: Once you’ve ticked the above boxes, it’s time to create. Tune your camera to the right settings then, move through each room on your image list to take pictures. Find the spot you marked in each room, set up equipment, and take pictures. Make sure to do a double-check on each image to determine if there is a need for a re-take or not. Remember, it is always better to have more than enough images than insufficient images. When you have all your images, create your virtual tour by stitching images together using carefully selected virtual tour software.
Virtual tours can be really cost-efficient, time-saving, and effective if gone about the right way. It is fastly taking over the real estate industry, join the moving train.
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