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

Four years ago, when Alexis Bolin ordered her first virtual tour from iPIX, few other salespeople in her area were using the 360-degree photo tours on their property listings. As a broker-associate with Pensacola-based ERA Old South Properties inc., Bolin says her early premonitions about the value of virtual tours soon turned her into a pioneer in her market.

"Nobody was using virtual tours back then," recalls Bolin, who posted $16.5 million in sales last year and has worked for the same company for 23 years. "Knowing that innovation would set me apart from the rest of the crowd, I went for it."

Virtual tours feature a "moving" 360-degree tour of a property via the Internet. A prospective buyer just clicks on the photo of the home that is featured on your Web site and the tour begins, slowly moving through each room so the viewer feels as though he or she is actually walking through the home.

According to West Lake, Calif.-based HomeStore.com, operator of the Realtor.com Web site, property listings on the firm's Web site that feature virtual tours receive about 40 percent more views than those without.

Here are the steps that Bolin has taken over the last four years:

1. Outsource It

Bolin's first call went to virtual tour provider iPIX, a company whose technology now powers Realtor.com's tours. Thee process was simple: she sent an e-mail to IPIX that included the property address and other details, spoke with a representative to set up an appointment, then sat back and waited a couple of days while the photographer visited the property, shot the pictures, "stitched" them into a virtual tour and then e-mailed or uploaded the completed tour to the Web.

Today, there are myriad companies - some that operate regionally and others that serve a national audience-offering the turnkey approach. The upside of outsourcing the entire task is obvious for a busy Realtor, says Bolin. However, the downside was that iPIX's $99.95 fee (note: now $119.95) included only four photos, making it a less flexible choice for a Realtor who may want to include neighborhood, school or amenity photos in the tour.

2. On Your Own

Two years ago Bolin started creating her own virtual tours-an option that required more elbow grease and time on her part, but allowed her to create a more customized tour faster and cheaper. She could even throw in a few photos of the surrounding neighborhood and amenities, something the full-service approach didn't allow. To do it, Bolin purchased VisualTour's photo-editing software and started taking photos with a Canon digital camera and a wide-angle-lens Minolta 35mm camera.

"The nice thing about doing it myself was that I didn't even need a digital camera," says Bolin. "I just scanned the photos in." Once the photos are scanned in-or uploaded to the computer from the digital camera-Bolin downloads them into the VisualTour software, selects the photos she wants "stitched" together, clicks a button and watches as the virtual tour is created. "It aligns the photos automatically, adjusts the color and the brightness and everything," she says.

Once the tour is finished, Bolin names it-usually based on the street or subdivision-then keys in a description of the home, the price, the square footage, details about the rooms, captions and other identifying text to be viewed by the potential buyer. She can add more shots for $5 to $10 each, and can also include music and voiceovers to the tour. "You can also add shots of area schools, neighborhoods and other features," says Bolin, adding that she sometimes creates her own "relocation packages," puts the complete tour on CD-ROM and then places the CDs near a home's front door during open houses.

3. The Right Approach

Bolin says she prefers a combo approach. When she's strapped for time, she uses Realtor.com's HomeTour 360 full-service offering, which costs $99.95 (note: now $119.95) for four virtual scenes (additional scenes are $20 each) and includes placement on one of four national real estate aggregator sites: Realtor.com, HomeAdvisor.com, HomeSeekers, com of Homes.com. "I sell over 100 properties a year, so it's often much easier to pick up the phone," says Bolin. "It's like ordering out."

But, depending on the individual homeowner, the home and her schedule, Bolin also creates her own virtual tours with the VisualTour software and a $1,000 Sony MVC CD300 digital camera that she recently purchased. Once she takes the appropriate photos, it's back to the office to stitch them into a virtual tour, upload it to her Web site, and then e-mail it to her customers and prospects.

Bolin says the key to creating effective virtual tours is knowing that they'll never replace a buyer's in-person visit to a property. Instead, they should serve as an enticement to "come on in and see more."

"Sellers often get flustered when a virtual tour doesn't present the home in a way they'd hoped, which is why I now set up an appointment between the photographer and home seller for the photo session," says Bolin. "But even so, I always tell sellers that the buyer is still going to have to come look because no one can do justice to a home with photographs."

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 CyberStars™, 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.