A great market reputation is one of the primary assets for a realtor to attract new customers. But, due to the rapidly growing competition in the real estate market, it can be challenging for realtors to generate the desired leads by relying on their business reputation alone.

It’s also imperative to explore other avenues that could help businesses enhance their customer services and gain a competitive advantage at the same time.

One such revolutionary technology that can make it easier for realtors to grab customers’ attention, build trust, and grow their sales is 360 Virtual Tour. As the name implies, these types of property tours allow people to virtually move around through a physical space and get a better understanding of how it looks in real life.

This saves the unnecessary hassle of visiting multiple physical locations and makes the entire property-hunting experience more relaxing.

Let’s understand the fundamentals of 360 virtual property tours and how they can aid in the growth of real estate businesses.

Understanding the Basics of 360 Virtual Tours

360 tours follow the same working principle of a panoramic image captured by your smartphone. A series of images are stitched together to create a raw distorted image.

These distorted images are then processed through a software program to eliminate unwanted anomalies and generate a more optimized 360 spherical image that gives a realistic representation of the virtual space.

Users can access these 360-degree environments via their smartphones (or desktops) and move around the space by swiping in a particular direction. For a more realistic experience, such property tours can be paired with VR headsets, which will make buyers think they are indeed standing at the real location.

With VR integration, users can get an immersive touring experience and explore every nook and cranny of the property without leaving their homes.

How Realtors Can Use 360 Tours to Entice Buyers?

Realtors can provide remote tours to potential buyers and let them decide faster without having to physically visit multiple properties.

Thanks to better reliance and a more realistic experience, customers prefer property listings that offer 360 tours. Studies have shown that property listings with virtual tour options get 87% more views than regular listings. And, the reasons are pretty obvious. With virtual property tours, buyers can explore multiple properties in a day while staying within the comfort of four walls.

Moreover, there are additional benefits that make them imperative for real estate marketing. These benefits include:

1. Instant Customer Engagement

When a realtor is trying to sell a large property, regular pictures will fail at keeping the buyers engaged. Why? Because they lack the necessary visualization element and people may not be able to perceive different areas of the property.

360 virtual property tours can easily overcome this situation and provide customers with a more interactive tour of the property. They can move through different rooms, hallways, and other spaces within the building. This will lead to better customer engagement and buyers will eventually choose your property listings.

2. Provide Detailed Information

Among other things, one of the most nerve-wracking tasks for a realtor is to repeatedly explain the details of a property to multiple buyers.

Fortunately, virtual property tours can completely eliminate this problem and help realtors still share all the necessary information buyers need to make the right decision.

Within a virtual space, it’s possible to set up multiple click points that’ll share a detailed overview of the particular space. For instance, realtors can configure click points to explain the details of the material used in the flooring, furniture, and other equipment.

3. Higher Profits

As surprising as this may sound, providing 360 property tours in a virtual environment can lead to increased profits as well.

Since virtual tours give realtors the power to provide better customer service, there’s a huge chance that people will pay more for the listed property.

Realtors accepting bids for their property listings can also increase the overall bid value through 360 tours and make higher profits on their sales.

4. Competitive Advantage

Realtors and real estate agencies using 360 property tours with their property listings can get ahead of the competition and represent themselves as an industry leader. This can strengthen their brand presence, leading to more business opportunities in the long run.

How to Get Started With 360 Virtual Property Tours?

Realtors looking to relish the benefits of 360 tours can use a wide variety of online tools to create 360 walkthroughs for their properties. These online tools are tailored to stitch together a series of pictures and generate their respective 360 panoramic images.

But it’s worth noting that these 360 images may not provide the same interactive experience as a full-scale VR-based tour of the property. With VR integration, buyers can fully immerse themselves in a virtual representation of the physical property and explore different areas in a more interactive manner.

To create these virtual rooms, realtors can partner with 3D artists and designers who’ll set up a virtual replica of their properties. These artists use high-end software solutions to combine raw images and create hyperrealistic virtual environments.

Customers can access these virtual realms using VR headsets and decide if the particular property aligns with their requirements or not. As a result, they can easily make wiser purchases while buying or renting a new property.

The Future of 360 Virtual Tours in Real Estate

As new technological advancements continue to unfold, 360 virtual property tours will further provide more interactive virtual touring experiences to customers.

With the amalgamation of technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Artificial Intelligence (AI), realtors will be able to showcase their properties through hyperrealistic virtual environments.

Moreover, with advancements in 360 camera technology such as Insta360 and their respective editing platforms, realtors will find it much easier to devise dynamic and visually engaging 360 virtual tours for their properties. To make these virtual tours more interactive, they can further incorporate realistic 3D models to give buyers a sense of how the entire place will look in real life.