VisualTour.com™ Contact: J. L. Winn, TRF Systems, Inc.
JLWinn@VisualTour.com 954.345.9701 ext 220

Source: By Beth Bresnahan - National Relocation & Real Estate Magazine, September 1, 2001

The virtual home tour is quickly becoming a ubiquitous part of an agent's Web-based marketing cachet. Real estate professionals who don't offer them are scrambling to catch up with this consumer-driven necessity in the Internet home search process.

Homestore 360, formerly iPIX, continues to hold the top spot in virtual tours, however, VisualTour.com, the self-proclaimed "clear number two" company has redesigned and improved the traditional virtual tour and presents it in a comprehensive new package.

"We give Realtors the ability to control their virtual tours," says Steve Jarrell, VisualTour.com chief executive officer. "They determine how much of each room to show. It's one more component in their advertising tool kit." But more than that, Jarrell says, VisualTour offers Realtors a choice in how they want to develop their online tours. If you know how to use a standard digital camera, VisualTour's self-service program offers several interesting components. Here's a brief overview:

• Agents can have up to 50 scenes per standard tour at no extra charge.
  
• Can have a tour up and running on their Web site within 30 minutes after taking the photos
  
• Features include a streaming voice description of tour, buyer can contact the agent's phone or beeper directly from the tour or e-mail the agent directly from the tour.
• Unlimited text descriptions on each scene
• Tour includes the agent's photo, contact information, and broker's logo
• Can email tours or copy tours to disk or CD-ROM at no charge
• Inventory list of their tours is maintained automatically and can be displayed from the Realtor's Web site without manual work by the agent or a webmaster .

These features for VisualTour's self-service package are offered at $25 per tour. However, VisualTour recently announced its version of a full-service package, offered for a price comparable to the current options available, with added features. The new service was created through a recently announced agreement with Illinois-based, Virtual Imaging Corporation (VIC), the nation's largest real estate image capture company.

"We had been concentrating on the self-service market," Jarrell says. "We now have the ability to offer both full service and self service virtual tours. That's a huge advantage for us in attracting large broker clients. I'm very excited about that. Now we are the only company that can offer full service virtual tours to brokers with a guaranteed two-day turn around."

J.L Winn, VisualTour's vice president of marketing, discusses the thinking behind the development of the new tour packages: "About a year ago all of our sales were to individual agents," he says. "The broker/owner community began requesting this technology to help them integrate their traditional recruiting and branding to the Internet, so we developed it with a lot of back end technology that lets the broker/owner control their agents' tours and monitor its usage, which leads to more results oriented advertising opportunities. It's a very effective marketing, listing and recruiting tool."

VIC has over 20 years of experience in the image capture business, and VisualTour has been developing and deploying their agent controlled virtual tour technology for over five years and has a large, loyal customer base. Winn reports that VisualTour currently has 6,000 agents and over 100 brokers using the product.

"We're excited to be working with a strong partner that shares our commitment to providing world class services and products," says Tom Beverly, CEO of Virtual Imaging Corp.

The new partnership is already benefiting its clients. Prudential California Realty (PCR), with 118 offices and over 29,000 real estate transactions in 2000, was one of the first customers to sign up for the new full service virtual tour offering.

Ed Krafchow, president of PCR, says, "Due to the fast turnaround of listings in our market, the ability to have a full service tour on the Web within two days offers a superior marketing advantage for our agents and a tangible benefit for our customers. In addition we'll get over twice as many scenes in each tour, and we're getting tours that brand our company. That's very important to us."

VisualTour is owned by TRF Systems, which has been profitable in developing Internet-based software for the past 10 years. Five years ago, the company began developing PhotoShare, what Winn calls the predecessor to its current VisualTour. PhotoShare was an early way for Realtors to create virtual tours using a standard digital camera. It wasn't Web-based, rather, the user would download text and voice into a software program and use it as a marketing tool for listing presentations and other marketing campaigns.

VisualTour began developing its current product in 1997, which was designed to be more than the typical spin around photography. The company changed its brand name about a year-and-half ago and released the new product at the NAR convention in 1999.

Jarrell is confident that virtual tours will be as common as business cards in the near future. "Virtually every home that's for sale will have some kind of virtual tour," he says. "I really believe that."

About VisualTour

VisualTour (www.VisualTour.com) is developed by TRF Systems, Inc. of Coral Springs, Florida. Incorporated in 1991, TRF Systems is the leading provider of innovative digital photo management software and services in a number of vertical markets. VisualTour.com is recommended by the Council of Residential Specialists, the Allen F. Hainge CyberStarsä™, and the Real Estate CyberSpace Society. For more information, please contact J. L. Winn at TRF Systems at 954.345.9701 or by email at JLWinn@VisualTour.com. VisualTour.com is a trademark of TRF Systems.