TRIVIA QUESTION: What %age of listings on Realtor.com have Virtual Tours (VTs) ?

Well, this was the very topic of my research today and I discovered some mind boggling stats. Since, we’re based here in Silicon Valley, we thought it would be interesting to start the research in our local market to see if we’re as techie as the valley we live in. So here it goes…

I started the search on Realtor.com using the following criteria: “San Jose, CA (no price range)” and found 2,866 properties . I then sorted the results by “Featured Tour” which shows the listings with VTs first (who would’ve thought). There were 287 property pages, with each page displaying 10 properties. I paged through the listings to see how many VT pages I would find. Well guess what ? I thought I was going to do a lot of paging, but my journey ended abruptly. After quickly reaching page 30 (2 VTs on page 30) , the virtual tours were gone! What ? 292 virtual tours ? Out of 2,866 homes in San Jose ? That means only 10.8% of the homes are marketed using VTs. That is an amazing statistic! There’s something wrong with this picture (no pun intended). Try it for your city and let us know what %age you find.

Why aren’t more properties marketed using Virtual Tours ? We don’t have the answer to that (if you do please share your insights), but there are many, many reasons why they should be used. Here are some obvious reasons (especially for a slowing market):

1. Virtual Tours Increase Traffic
As more and more agents migrate their marketing dollars to the internet to attract the growing percentage of buyers who start their home search online, it is becoming more difficult to differentiate oneself and attract the greatest traffic to one’s listing. As we can see in our example above, virtual tours can effectively increase your listing ranking and thus traffic. If a buyer were to search for listings on Realtor.com and checked the “Featured Tour” option, and you didn’t have a VT, then your listing wouldnt’ show up until the 30th page. Would you as a buyer scroll through 30 pages of listings at one sitting ?

2. Virtual Tours are Sticky
I’m not sure about this, but I’m willing to take a wild guess that VTs are more sticky than still pictures. And they are sticky not only for buyers, but also for sellers. For most buyers, its pretty obvious, we live in a multimedia world now and listings that move attract eyeballs (with the caveat that they are designed well - spinning houses gets me dizzy and that doesn’t work). Not only that, but we’re talking about VTs that provide more relevant information about the listing so that the buyer can take the next action (VISIT THE HOUSE), information such as neighborhood demograhics, shool APIs, recent comparables - all of this information together presents a better picture for the listing. Secondly, VTs are another tool that you can use during your listing appointment to show the seller that you will find more ways to market their properties.

3. Virtual Tours are Available
There are hundreds of VT companies offering VT solutions with prices ranging anywhere from $19/tour to $79/tour. Almost every MLS or local Realtor association has some type of VT affiliate program. But even then, there are not many in use. Why ? If it increases the cost/listing, we’ve got the answer, if it is for some other reason, we’d like anyone to comment.

Realivent has just introduced our Free Virtual Tour system, complete with listing details, neighborhood demographics, featured listings, and the ability to add your own home search page.

Here is a sample virtual tour : SAMPLE FREE TOUR

Just enter your listing once, add unlimited photos and panoramas, and voila - you’ve got an instant virtual tour, complete
with your contact information, your featured listings, comparables (can be turned off), mapping, neighborhood demographics, and finally the ability to add your own home search page.

Its FREE - please use it. You don’t have to use ours (but its FREE) but shouldn’t sellers deserve it ? And if you don’t, please tell us why you think virtual tours would not help you market your seller’s property ?

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