Remember what A stands for in PACE? The 4 principles of selling a home?

• Price
• Accessibility
• Condition
• Exposure

Accessibility! Usually, we think of accessibility in terms of making a home easy to show, like a lockbox and easy-to-follow showing instructions.

But a real estate agent can take “accessibility” digital and help sell their homes via virtual tours.

Virtual tours are a series of high-quality 360 panoramas from multiple locations throughout a home. The Streetview on Google Maps is a virtual tour of America’s road. For real estate, would-be-buyers have an opportunity to get a feel for a home’s floorplan and a more authentic feel of what it would be like to be in the home. Still photography can’t deliver that experience.

Putting together a virtual tour has become a lot easier and a lot cheaper in recent years. You often don’t even need anything more than your smartphone, though even starter 360 cameras are affordable.

Virtual tours took on an extra significance in 2020 during the COVID pandemic. Real estate professionals were frantic to find ways to sustain business in a time of social distancing. Virtual tour sales took off. The virtual tour was not only a way for sellers to promote their listings but for buyers agents to do live listing walkthroughs of listings.

Below is a selection of some of the best virtual tour software available to agents and brokerages!

The Contenders

Other Virtual Tour Software Options

• CloudPano
• EasyPano
• Klapty
• iStaging
• Lapentor
• REveo
• Ogulo

3D Cameras

This list is comprised of software that makes use of 360 videos, photos, and even just 2D photos. The line continues to blur between the capabilities of 360 cameras and 3D cameras. But for true 3D tour, you’re likely looking at the Matterport or iGuide.

Notably, Matterport now has its tools that are usable with 360 cameras if you aren’t up for purchasing the actual 3D camera.

Choosing a Virtual Tour Software

The things you will want to consider when looking at virtual tour software include:

• Smartphone or 360 Camera? Some support smartphones if you are doing your 360 tours affordably. Others work exclusively with 360 cameras and some even require some of their own hardware.
• Ease of Use. Working with photography can be frustrating if you’re a noob. A program that can make that easy wins a lot of points.
• Hosting costs. Some are affordable entry price points, but quickly can get pricey in the costs to host these on the provider’s system. For some systems, you only have so much space and cannot build an extensive library of online tours without paying for the space.
• Editing capabilities. It’s not enough for your panoramas to be 360. Just like your normal photography, your 360 tours need to show the house in the best light. Being able to edit and optimize your photos within a program is a plus.
• Features. Interactive hotspots? Voiceover narration? 360 video? Social media integrations? Single property websites and landing pages? VR headsets? Mobile-app? Branded nadirs? Device testing? Floor plans? Dollhouses?

Conclusion

Offering professional virtual tours to your clients is an obvious way to stand out in a listing presentation. Or it can be the difference between representing or not representing an out-of-town buyer. Most MLSs have places to syndicate branded and unbranded virtual tours, and sites like Zillow even offer free virtual tour software to encourage agents to take a chance on this better consumer experience.

Shop Virtual Tours