Virtual property tours are a great way to market listings because they give an interested person a way to “see” the home without actually having to be there. Many home buyers like to view these tours because it saves them time by helping to eliminate homes that don’t fit their needs. The tours also help to stimulate interest in homes that they do want to visit.
Either way, it’s a benefit to the seller, the buyer and the real estate professional to have one.
However, they can be expensive and do take some time to create. And, there are times when you just want to quickly put together some visual and/or audio information to send to an interested party.
I found three alternatives to the traditional virtual property tour that you might want to investigate, and here they are:
The first up is Narrable.com. From their blog, this is how they describe themselves: “Narrable is an online storytelling site that combines your most important photos with the voices that bring them to life.” What this means is that you create a free account, then you upload one or more photos. After that you can record audio for each picture. This is all done through your browser and is easy to do.
Once you have recorded the audio, the “Narrable” is finished and can then be shared via email, Facebook or embedded on your website. What you end up with is a self running “video” that shows your pictures with voice descriptions attached.
I think that this would be a cool way for you to showcase a listing, a neighborhood or anything else that you have in the way of pictures. You get 5 Narrables with a free account and and unlimited ones with a $5.00 a month account.
Next up is PicoVico.com. You upload a set of pictures to the site where you can then add titles or captions, choose a theme and transitions, add some of their music or your own and they then compile it into a video that can be shared on Facebook or Twitter. There are other ways to do this of course, but this is free and is drop dead easy and quick to do.
PicoVico takes the “work” out of editing the video which is the major thing that I like about it. That and the pre-made themes and the royalty free stock music that you can use make this worth a look.
The final alternative is Vine.co the new iPhone app offering from Twitter. (This is currently only available for IOS, but they promise other platforms soon.
You use your phone (the Vine app) to create a short (6 seconds or less) video which you then can share on Twitter. From their blog, we learn this: “Vine is a mobile service that lets you create and share short looping videos. Videos you post on Vine appear on your profile and are shared with your followers. You can also share them instantly to Twitter or Facebook. Vine is currently available for iPhone and iPod touch. After installing Vine on your device, you can sign up using an email address or sign in with your Twitter account. Once you’ve logged in, you can find people to follow, post your own videos, and more.”
What can you accomplish in a 6 second video? Quite a bit from some of the videos that I have seen on Vine, so this might just be perfect to shoot a quick video to showcase a feature of a listing to a curious buyer.
While none of these will replace your virtual tour provider, one of them may be just the ticket when you need a quick and easy way to share some imagery with someone. What do you think?
