3D Virtual Reality

[FredLight]

If anyone is interested in doing their OWN virtual tours, I am selling an almost brand new Kaidan 360 One VR lens. It works with most digital cameras and takes a 360 degree tour in one shot (no stitching). I bought it last December brand new to add to my web design business, but honestly I'm just too busy and don't have time to pursue this angle at this time. It has been used [literally] about 5 times. Am throwing it up on eBay on Monday,March 20 in the evening if anyone is interested. More info on the Kaidan site at http://www.kaidan.com/Detail.bok?no=101

[sonoran]

Hello All, I’m new on this forum and this is my first post. I am so glad I found this forum on a search engine. The amount of information here is fantastic. First the disclosure, I am a Virtual Tour provider and I'm posting to put out information that I find very few Real Estate agents are aware of.
1) A Virtual Tour should promote the Agent as well as the Property you are listing. You would be surprised but there are Tours out there that only have the tour on the web page and nothing else.
2) there should be links to other information about the property, a map or flyer, ....and the agent, agent's website, agent's other listings, direct email link etc.
3) You should always be sure your Virtual Tour comes with a link to Realtor.com. This is imperative unless you only want your tour to be available to your local MLS viewers. Maybe a local MLS has tens of thousands of visitors a month....Realtor.com has 5 to 6 million visitors a month. On average, 120,000 visitors a day on Realtor.com choose to view listings only with virtual tours. That's roughly 60% on any given day.
4) Many Tour providers state a price on their website that does not include a link to Realtor.com....the cost of the link is extra ...just be aware of the contents of the tour you purchase.
4a) Cost of advertising.... dollar for dollar the cost of advertising your listing on the Internet with a Virtual Tour is far more cost effective than Print advertising in your local Sunday Paper. My least expensive Virtual Tour has a cost of .45 cents a day and it stays up on the Internet for 6 months. 24/7 viewing time. An ad in the local Sunday paper, Friday, Saturday, Sunday is about $ 190.00...thats $63.00 a day...do the math!
5) Many virtual tours come in a viewing window size of 3.5" by 2.5" inches. If you are going to spend your advertising dollar you might as well get the largest viewing real estate, no pun intended, as possible. Search around, it's your dollar.
6) This is probable the most important point of all. Agents advertise to put their listing out in front of the buying public. If the Buyers don't see it how are they going to contact you for a showing and an eventual purchase. There is a pecking order of how listings are presented to the buying public on Realtor.com. Here are the results of three searches to illustrate. Search done for a home in XYZ town, value of $425k, with the $400k to $450k value range chosen....
1) Straight search of homes without multiple photos or a virtual tour resulted with a return of 237 homes with the targeted address as home #167 on page 16 of 21 pages.
After adding a Virtual Tour to the search listing, the following results were returned......
2) Search choosing listings with multiple photos..... Listing was #14 out of 237 on page 2 of 21 pages.
3) Search choosing listings with Virtual Tours.....listing was #7 out of 237 on page 1 of 21 pages.

Summary: In the third search there were only 14 homes returned with a Virtual Tour, the red spinning house. Only 14 agents out of 237 understood the power of adding a Virtual Tour to there listing. Where do you want your home?.....on page 1 or 2, or on page 21?
There are other criteria that come into play when the search results are presented..I.e. Results are listed in descending order least expensive to most expensive. In a multiple photo search Virtual Tours do show up but only after listings with multiple photos and not a Virtual Tour. A Virtual Tour is after all a set of multiple photos.
When a search with a Virtual Tour is used, listings with Virtual Tours do appear at the head of the list in descending value order but there is a catch! ....Agents who purchase a website showcase on Realtor.com get their listings moved to the top of the list first before all others. I know this can be complicated and if you are interested I suggest you run your own searches, with your own listings to further make sense of this.
Now, if you are new to the Virtual Tour issue, here is a link to a Tour that you can use as a base for when you look for a provider. http://www.eprovirtualtours.com/diamond/
I hope this information gives a little more clarity to some about a misunderstood topic. Sonoran

[muguran]

If anyone is interested in doing their OWN virtual tours, I am selling an almost brand new Kaidan 360 One VR lens. It works with most digital cameras and takes a 360 degree tour in one shot (no stitching). I bought it last December brand new to add to my web design business, but honestly I'm just too busy and don't have time to pursue this angle at this time. It has been used [literally] about 5 times. Am throwing it up on eBay on Monday,March 20 in the evening if anyone is interested. More info on the Kaidan site at http://www.kaidan.com/Detail.bok?no=101

FredLight did you sell it?
I am interested to buy one of Kaidan 360 One VR lens...

Thank you.

[JGRRN]

If you're looking for some VT software, check out www.ulead.com. Their Cool 360 software looks promising and you can d/l a free trial. It's only $39.95 to buy so that definitely puts it in the 'affordable' category. If you have a website that you can ftp to, it would be easy enough to make your own tours then u/l them to your site.

--Jim