Broker-associate Jim Kacewicz of RE/MAX 1st Choice in Cranston embraces new technology. So when he speaks of ‘virtual’ home tours, his latest Web site tool, he doesn’t hide his enthusiasm. ”I’m technically oriented,” said Kacewicz, who is in business with his wife Lynne. “I’m thrilled to death with it.”
His enthusiasm is for a technology so new that many Realtors are unaware of it. Realtors can now train a video camera on sections of a home – such as the living room or kitchen – record the image, and post it on the Internet. Buyers searching the Web may then view the video. It gives them the sensation that they are standing in the house, looking around a room.
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Someone inspecting a home online may click onto links that lead to images of the part of a home they wish to see. For example, by clicking onto the “exterior back” link of one of the homes now featured on www.riliving.com, the Web site of the Rhode Island Association of Realtors, the buyer will get a 360-degree video tour that starts with images of the back porch, moves to the swimming pool, the basketball court, the swing set, and then back to the porch.
The Realtors Association has recently begun making the service available to members through its Web site. It has done so by partnering with a Palo Alto, Calif. company, bamboo.com, which is providing the technology needed to make it work.
While many Realtors are already offering pictures of their clients’ homes on their Web sites, Kacewicz believes the moving image offered by video will be valuable to sellers because it enables them to better show off their homes’ best features. For example, the $295,000 home in Cranston he has featured on the riliving Web site has a “Wonderful backyard which you can’t see from a drive-by or a front picture,” he said.
While only a handful of the association’s members is posting images now, use of the service eventually will boom, said John Day, a spokesman for the association. “We expect that it will take off like firecrackers as soon as people (realize) how effective it is,” he said.
If a seller wants his or her house featured, his or her Realtor calls a toll-free number to the bamboo.com order center to arrange to have a videographer come to the home. For $99.95, the Realtor gets four 360-degree images. Typically, one exterior and three interior images are recorded. Extra images are $20 each. The shoot takes 30 to 40 minutes.
The tape is then shipped to bamboo.com offices in Toronto for editing. Footage is then compressed into a file and posted onto the Realtor’s choice of Web sites. The process takes from three to five days.
Realtors, rather than sellers, typically pay for the service.
Bill Powers, a photojournalist and videographer who is owner of Statewide Photo Service, is one of the videographers who is working with Realtors now.
Powers said he’s already had plenty of jobs, and he expects to hire more people to keep pace with the number of Realtors who want to add virtual tours to their Web sites. “I did five of them yesterday,” he said. “I think this is going to catch on.”
However, Realtors say that since the practice is so new, it is too early to tell if the virtual tours will reduce the amount of time it takes to sell a home, or if it will mean that only those who are serious about purchasing the home will actually come to the open houses.
Kacewicz, for one, said he has only put one house online thus far. But he added that he plans to provide the virtual tour service to anyone who lists with him in August.
”This is something that just became available to me, so I really haven’t been able to see any proven results,” he said.
And virtual tours may not be for everyone. They work best, Realtors say, if your home has some outstanding feature, such as a great view, to show off.
”If you have a rather basic home, I don’t know how much pizzazz it’s going to have,” said Jay Readyhough, president of the Realtors Association. “What it’s helpful for is a house that has some outstanding features.”
He agreed that it is too early to judge the effectiveness of virtual tours as a new selling tool, but he added: “We just put our first property up a week to 10 days ago, and we’ve already had a number of inquiries.”
Nationally, the practice is catching on, said Walter Molony, a spokesman for the National Association of Realtors, who added that virtual tours speed up the process for everyone because buyers become more informed. The association has yet to gather statistics on the number of Realtors using virtual tours now, he said.
”It’s too early to determine statistically the percentage increase,” Molony said. But he added: “It is becoming much more common.”
The company seeking to exploit this trend is bamboo.com, formerly Jutvision Corp. Bamboo.com, a private company, announced in April that it had received $12.5 million in new funding from Intel Corp., Trident Corp., and the Walled Group. It is currently operating in 75 major metropolitan markets, with the Providence area being among the most recent additions, according to information provided by the company.
