Virtual Reality Benefiting Real Estate Sales

Since the early 1990s real estate agents have looked at the Internet as a marketing tool. At first their Web sites were no more than static catalogs of their listings, the more tech-savvy agents and brokers soon discovered the benefits of virtual reality to their real estate sales.

The first attempts were crude by today's standards, no more than panoramic static photos of the homes for sale. Motion was added to the photos with scripts written just for that purpose. Some real estate sites added music and titles, and some even offer audio voice overs to give a more you-are-there feel to their attempt at virtual reality.

The latest in the area of real estate sales on the Internet is the use of video. Talk about virtual reality! When done correctly, you can imagine actually being in the home with the agent guiding you on a tour.

Some of the benefits to using video virtual reality tours on a real estate site include the fact that visitors stay at the site with video nearly 80 percent longer than sites that have no video. In addition, almost 90 percent of visitors will watch the on-site video. Hard to argue with numbers like that.

Real estate sites offering virtual tours of their listed properties also enjoy more benefits.

It's estimated that 50 percent of online visitors that participate in the virtual tour will visit will visit homes they've seen at the site. The agents report the tours stimulate decisions to buy and traffic to their listed homes is greatly increased.

We can hardly wait to see what happens next with virtual reality technology.