When Mike and I first started doing tours with Real Tour Vision, we were a little confused. We thought we could only have a total of 30 pictures per tour. And with every full panorama being 12 pictures, it was a challenge to put together a tour - especially for large homes. We usually did one full spin, a couple of partial spins and some stills.

Imagine our surprise and elation (and embarrassment) when we discovered the tours have 30 slots that can be filled with full panoramas, partials or stills - not just 30 pictures! Now Mike does lots of full spins, some partials and some stills. Our Four Seasons Virtual Tours clients (real estate agents and the sellers) seem to be happy with the tours.

However...I personally feel the tours as we are doing them now are too big. I think the smaller tours were easier to look at. Do we really need a panorama of the kitchen/family room from two different directions, plus stills? Do we really need to do a full panorama of a large room when a lot of it is blank walls? A good piece of art or writing is often better when it is "tighter". (I have to admit I'm a minimalist.)

I get impatient looking at them sometimes, so I'm wondering what a buyer might think. On the other hand, maybe the buyers want as many pictures as possible from every angle in order to get a good idea of what a home looks like. After all, they don't have to just let the tour run, they can control what rooms they look at.

Finally, the tours are taking much longer to photograph and stitch. We'll never get up to 500 tours a year at this rate!

What do you think?

With newspaper readership down, savy real estate agents are looking for alternative ways to attract buyers to their listings. Internet advertising is especially important because according to a National Association of Realtors survey, more than 75% of buyers are starting their home search on line.

If you have a property on a main road or in a busy section of a neighborhood, PanoRiders may be another advertising option to add to your arsenal.

The concept is simple, but VERY effective. Each PanoRider advertises a single property website URL for the home - such as www.123MainStreet.com - along with a high quality panorama from the virtual tour.

Since our parent company, Real Tour Vision, started offering this option they have been keeping track of how much traffic they generate. The PanoRiders are generating more traffic than Realtor.com, the local MLS, and agent and broker websites combined! The PanoRiders are bringing in at least 50% of the traffic to RTV virtual tours - and in some cases up to 75% of the traffic!

If you already have a website that you can have the sign point to, you can use just the PanoRider. The basic riders are 8" high x 30" wide, and custom sizes are available.

Or you can use the PanoRider and Property Specific Website package. This includes the sign rider, a customized domain name, and a website that features not only the virtual tour but enhanced listing information as well. The site is active for one year.

Signs have always generated a lot of traffic for listings. Now turn street traffic into web traffic with PanoRiders and Property Specific Websites!

Virtual tours save gas - buyers can see homes online first and choose just the ones that most closely fit their dreams. This also saves wear and tear on the agent!

Four Seasons Virtual Tours has been providing high quality, true 360 degree virtual tours to Northwest Indiana and the South Chicago Suburbs since 2006.

Late last year we did a virtual tour for one of our occasional realtor clients (it was his third tour).

In April we were called by another one of our clients from a different real estate office to do a new tour for her - it was the same home.

In the past we have had tours on listings that changed hands in the same office. Both of the original listing agents gave permission for the new agent to use the tour on the "new" listing.

This time the listing had expired and the owners had gone to a new agent and a different office (not even the same franchise).

What to do? The original agent would not give his permission to transfer the tour. We decided that we had to reshoot the tour for the second agent. We were a little uncomfortable charging twice for a tour - but we did go out and photograph the entire tour a second time. The homeowners were a little surprised to see us again - but they understood the situation.

What do you think?

Four Seasons Virtual Tours is a full-service, true 360 degree virtual tour provider serving Northwest Indiana and the South Chicago Suburbs.

Does anyone know if we can put Postlets in our Active Rain blogs?

Thanks for the feedback.

Debbie

Four Seasons Real Estate is one of the offices in Northwest Indiana that I provide with virtual tours and advertising. We are both in the Lakes of Four Seasons area of Northwest Indiana.

They are starting something new for Northwest Indiana - an auction of homes and lots. I understand that this is done in California, but it will be a first here. The properties available include vacant lots, new construction, existing homes, investment properties and even a gourmet restaurant/lounge.

The auction is scheduled for May 3 at the Avalon Manor (3550 E. US 30) in Hobart, Indiana from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. The homes will all be available to be seen by appointment and open house prior to the auction. Pre-registration are written loan approval are required. (There is no fee to register.)

Broker cooperation is invited. Agents must show the property and attend the auction with registered clients to prepare the purchase contract. Full Buyer Agent compensation as offered in GNIAR MLS.

You can see the homes available and find out more about the auction at Four Season Auction.

Debbie Higgins
Four Seasons Virtual Tours
Four Seasons Virtual Assistance

I wanted to let you know who is really in charge around here.

Title: "The Snoopervisor"

I have always wanted to do a panorama with a pet in each shot. I think it would be fun, but I haven't managed to talk Mike into it yet.

In my Four Seasons Virtual Assistance incarnation I am often asked by real estate agents to send out advertising email to their clients or to other real estate agents.

Four Seasons Real Estate is doing a real estate auction in May. This isn't a foreclosure auction, but the sale of homes and lots that the owners have agreed to put up at auction. California realtors have been doing this for years, but this will be the first time in Northwest Indiana. Buyers who want to participate in the auction have to pre-register and submit loan pre-approvals. The owners will have designated a minimum price that they will accept; but it isn't disclosed to the buyers. If the home doesn't sell, there is a small "no sale" fee to the seller to cover the cost of the auctioneer.

I bring this up because the broker of Four Seasons Real Estate wanted to send an announcement to all the real estate agents in Northwest Indiana to inform them of the sale because a regular commission will be paid to buyers' agents who bring their clients to the auction. There are approximately 2240 agents in Northwest Indiana. Printing and postage would be astronomical - not to mention the time needed to fold, stuff and stamp the envelopes.

Email seemed like the way to go. The two options I first came up with were Constant Contact and Campaign Monitor. These are websites where you can create an email flyer, upload your list of prospects, and send out the flyer as email.

Constant Contact requires that you register and pay a monthly fee. The fee is determined by how many emails you send per month. My client would have had to pay about $30.00 per month for the 2240 names. He could have registered, used it one month, and then quit.

Campaign Monitor charges only when you send out an email campaign, and the cost is, again, determined by how many you send out. The cost is $5.00 plus one cent per name, so this would have been $27.40.

One problem is that both ask that you only use email addresses you have obtained from people who agree to let you send them email, or "opt in." Otherwise, the email is SPAM. With Constant Contact, if you check off the boxes solemnly swearing that you have gotten permission from everyone, they take your word for it. Campaign Monitor actually looks at the list and has to approve it - and they might think that 2240 people might not all have given their permission.

Number two, my client didn't have the names and email addresses in an immediately usable form. It would have taken at least eight hours to make the list downloadable to one of the email services.

Sunday while I was surfing around on Active Rain, I noticed an ad for company a company called EmailAgentFlyers. Like the other two companies, they offer to send eflyers to real estate agents. Unlike the others, they already have the names and email addresses of most of the real estate agents in the country. They have templates you can use to make up a flyer or you can download a pdf of your own.

In less than 15 minutes I sent eflyers to 2240 real estate agents in Northwest Indiana for $17.95. Since I am an affiliate member of the Greater Northwest Indiana Association of Realtors, I received the email and I was very happy with the way it turned out. One possible drawback, depending on the client - EmailAgentFlyers does put their ad at the bottom of the flyer.

For virtual tour providers (like Four Seasons Virtual Tours) and virtual assistants, the application to our business is obvious. Sending out periodical flyers to and for real estate agents just got a whole lot easier!

And best of all - you can attach a virtual tour to the flyers!

I was a real estate agent for about four years. I sold a few homes, but I wasn't good enough at it to make a living. Instead, I decided to offer my services as a virtual assistant (basically a free-lance administrative assistant) to other realtors.

While I was a realtor, I attended the annual meetings of the local association of realtors. Before the meeting begins, they hold a business expo consisting of different businesses that cater to realtors: lenders, title companies, home inspectors, newspapers, etc., who are affiliate members of the association.  Attendance is usually around 200+ realtors.

When I decided to become a real estate assistant, I joined the association as an affiliate. There is an "initiation" fee, and the annual dues run around $200. A booth at the expo is about $185.

So there I was that first year, advertising my administrative expertise. But what comments did I hear from the realtors? "Oh, you do virtual tours!" Popped my bubble, I can tell you.

After I got over the frustration of nobody understanding my business, the light bulb went off. My husband's avocation is photography and we were looking for something for him to do to get away from his "real" job. We did a lot of research, and finally contacted Real Tour Vision because their tours are the best we have seen - real 360 degree virtual tours, clear and crisp, and affordable.

The last two years we have attended the expo as a virtual tour provider. We met three of our present clients at these expos. Plus we always come away with lots of business cards so that we can contact other realtors who attended, too!

If you don't know how to contact your local realtor association, just ask any realtor you work with. They are required to be members in most states.

Debbie Higgins
Four Seasons Virtual Tours
and
Four Seasons Virtual Assistance

I read with interest these blogs concerning the use of music and voice-over on virtual tours:

Music or Not and To Add or Not to Add.

I like to add music to our virtual tours, and I was really happy when Real Tour Vision expanded the list clips to choose from. I don't like all of them, but at least now there are more possibilities. I wish we could adjust the volume, though.

Recently, one of our clients asked if we could put classical music on one of her tours. I told her that we had some that sounded classical, and I would attach one of those to the tour. She didn't like the one I used - nor any of the others that were close. She wanted "real" classical music and she could provide the music she wanted. I pointed out that what she had was copyrighted material and I couldn't put it on the tour.

I went to my trusty computer (relatively trusty; but that's another blog) and started surfing the internet. There are plenty of companies that provided music clips and loops, but they were very expensive.

I finally found Opuzz.com. Their loop library includes classical clips; but it also has loops from many other categories such as pop, rock, jazz, electronica, world music and many others. The music is sold on a royalty-free, "buyout basis". This means you only need to pay once and use the loop as many times as you like. Their loops are 15 seconds in length and 5MB or less. The music is available as MP3 or WAV.

I really wanted to use the William Tell Overture. Visualizing the clients galloping through the tour with the Lone Ranger made me laugh until I cried. But I figured the agent and the seller would have coronaries. I discarded the idea of the Minute Waltz for the same reason.

I finally decided to try out Canon - almost everybody likes that. I found that I could download one version for $4.99, or three slightly different versions for $9.99. Ordering and downloading the files was very, very easy. You can also order CDs with sets of loops, making it cheaper.

Best of all, downloading the file to Real Tour Vision and putting it onto the tour was also very, very easy. The directions walk you right through the process. You can hear the loop on this tour of St James Place in Munster, Indiana.

Now Mike is ready to try doing voice-over. Has anyone done that yet?

Debbie Higgins
Old Fashioned Service ~ 21st Century Technology
Four Seasons Virtual Tours

Referrals are one of the best ways to get new clients. The old adage, "It's not what you know, but who you know," is true.

Almost all of the realtors we have done tours for are thrilled with the quality of the tours we provide - thanks in part to the quality of Real Tour Vision tours and in part to Mike's photographic ability. The next step is to get them to refer us to their colleagues.

One of the tools we use is free tours. We always follow up with our clients to see how they like the tour and if we need to fix or change anything. They are usually happy with the tour and say they will use us again. We tell them they can get that next tour free if they refer another agent to us who hires us to do a tour. We have acquired about eight clients through these referrals, and many of the referrals have used us more than once. For the eight free tours we did at least 16 paid tours.

This may not be a good solution for some, but it has worked for us. For the cost of the RTV tour and Mike's time, we have expanded our business and gotten our name out there.