How to Answer the Top 5 Questions Vendors Have About Virtual Tours

Pitching something new as part of your listing presentations can be tricky, but we’re here to make the process of educating vendors about virtual tours as easy as possible.

We’ve put together a list of the five most common questions real estate professionals get asked when adding virtual tours to their listing presentations, and prepared some quick and easy answers you can share to show your vendor you’re the best agent for the job.

Want the quick version? Watch the video.

Question: Why do I need a virtual tour when the market is so hot?

How to respond: It’s my job to get you the highest price in the shortest possible time. The way I generate excitement around your property is to show the listing to as many people as possible, resulting in more competition and offers through the door.

Adding a virtual tour opens up your property to everyone 24/7 – interstate, overseas buyers and those who live nearby but can’t make the open home.

It also means I’m spending less time on buyers who aren’t serious. People who’ve viewed the virtual tour and then show up to an open home are significantly more likely to be ready to place an offer on your home.

Question: I don’t want to pay another $299 when I’m already paying for other marketing.

How to respond: The way to get the highest price for your property is to open it up to as many people as possible, and a virtual tour opens your home to everyone 24/7. All it takes is 1 or 2 more offers from someone who is keen but couldn’t view the property yet in person and it will pay for itself.

The $299 also includes floorplans, which are often an extra cost, which potential buyers will often want to see before even making their way to an open home.

You’ll also have access to an Insights Portal, which shows you real-time visitor data, such as how many people are viewing your home, what features of the property they are most interested in, and where in the world they are inspecting from. This gives me more insights that I can use in our marketing campaign, and gives you a real-time view of how your property listing is performing.

Question: Don’t people prefer to see a property in person rather than online?

How to respond: It’s hard to believe that people are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a property they’ve never set foot in, but we’re seeing record breaking sales from people buying sight unseen. We’re also seeing a significant uptake in the number of people moving interstate and into rural areas, without ever having set foot in the property they are purchasing.

An REA survey found that Australians are more likely to buy a new home than a puppy, sight unseen, and virtual tours provide them with the confidence to place higher offers despite never having done a physical inspection. This is because Little Hinges’ virtual tours are accurate to within a millimetre, and buyers can get a far more accurate picture of a property than they can from glossy photographs.

It’s also important to consider how buyers are thinking when they are in the process of buying a home. Often, they’ll inspect a home for a few minutes, at the same time as many other competitive buyers, and will then have to go away and remember what the property looked like, compared with others they might have viewed that day. A virtual tour helps to remind them why they fell in love with a property, and makes them feel more secure about placing an offer because they can walk through the tour at any time of the day or night to remind themselves of it’s qualities.

Question: Aren’t virtual tours only for fancy properties? Can you edit out the kids toys and the backyard that needs mowing?

How to respond: Virtual tours are an accurate representation of the property at the time of the scan, so it is important to put your best foot forward (which does mean popping the kids toys in a cupboard!). However, buyers know that glossy photographs are often edited, and don’t necessarily represent the property as it is. A virtual tour makes them feel confident that the property meets their needs before they even have to show up for a physical inspection, and it takes away the disappointment of coming to an inspection where a property is so different from the images presented online.

Virtual tours are also for any type of property. Because they are accurate to within a millimetre, we’re seeing sellers who are using them for renovator homes because buyers can get quotes and take accurate measurements that help them feel more comfortable putting their best offer forward.

Question: How will you know if they are working?

How to respond: Both of us will have access to a real-time Insights Portal that will show us how many people have inspected the property, where they are located, how many times they’ve inspected and what aspects of the property are most interesting to them. We can then use this information to tailor our marketing messages on other platforms.

The statistics also show that 95% of people are more likely to call about listings with 3D virtual tours and listings with video generate 403% more enquiries than those without. Buyers have come to expect virtual tours as the norm when looking for a new home.