3D Tours & Floor Plans: How to Rent Properties Faster & for Higher Rents (Part 1)
There’s no better feeling than having your property rented out to the perfect tenant.
But if you’re a landlord working in a popular market, there’s a lot of competition to keep your vacancy times to an absolute minimum and maintain your unit a hot pick.
3D tours and floor plans were all the rage during COVID-19 for obvious reasons, and now they’re here to stay.
But is it worth investing a few hundred dollars in virtual tours in terms of your ROI? We’re arguing yes. More & more prospective tenants prefer to view properties virtually before making an in-person visit because the technology reduces the number of steps involved in a normally tedious property canvassing process.
Instead of driving from one property to another and investing unnecessary time and physical effort, potential tenants can check multiple properties with just a click of a button and narrow down their options.
So if you want to start renting your properties quicker and for higher prices, start by helping potential tenants get an up-close visual without ever stepping foot through the front door.
We’re kicking off this article series with 3D tours and the first step in creating one: the real bang-for-buck value of shelling out for a fancy video tour of your rental.
Why Should You Invest in 3D Tours and Floor Plans?
The majority of people today, especially millennials, are comfortable making decisions based solely on virtual online tours when it comes to renting properties.
It’s no surprise that virtual tours have become a game-changer for businesses in today’s world—a 3D tour can decrease a property’s days on the market by 23% and increase leads per property by 27% – 35%.
3D tours and floor plans are providing new dimensions to property marketing (pardon the pun). Here are just a few of the benefits:
- Immersive experience: Prospective tenants can visualize themselves living in the property with much more detail and accuracy than with photos alone. Plus, people prefer being able to peruse online first—so give them what they want!
- Increase efficiency and save valuable time: Saves time, resources, and human involvement in the renting process. If you’re a DIY landlord, offering prospective tenants a 3D tour can save you from driving to the unit, waiting for the prospects to show up, only to get stood up or told it’s not what they’re looking for..
- Build trust: Establishes trust between the landlord and potential tenant, ensuring that the property is what it claims to be. More importantly, you wouldn’t want to get into any legal trouble if you show anything other than the property’s true value.
Landlords are increasingly opting for 3D tours and floor plans—and for good reason. A simple search on Redfin and Zillow will show listings offering such things already:
Moreover, as we can observe from Zillow and Redfin, properties with tours can help you get to the first page (think SEO). Adding a 3D tour could help you stand out overall when marketing your property.
You know what they say—the best place to “hide a dead body” is the second search results page.
How to Create a Virtual Tour and What to Include
Here’s a checklist of all the things to keep in mind when planning your own 3D tours:
- Complete unit interior and exterior: The most effective virtual real estate tours give potential buyers a fully immersive experience by including not only the interior but also the exterior of the unit, as well as the surrounding neighborhood.
- Exact property location: The location of a rental property is a critical factor that greatly influences the decision-making process for prospective tenants. Potential tenants don’t want units, they want community. So, showcase the community surrounding your rental property, giving prospective tenants a comprehensive view of the environment they’ll join if they decide to rent.
- Authentic content: When creating your virtual tour video, remember to be honest and accurate. You have to make the video both appealing and an exact representation of the physical property to increase your chances of drawing in respectable tenants who are happy tenants.
- Well-lit imaging: Get the best lighting possible to make it look aesthetic to your potential tenants. The best time is sundown to get that soft and warm lighting for better-quality images. We’re talking marketing here, so put your property in a good light (literally and figuratively).
- Attractive staging: Staging your property can help potential tenants imagine themselves living in the unit. You don’t have to shell out too much money—you can stage virtually instead. If your property is furnished, simply tidy up and remove messes you wouldn’t want people to see.
- High-quality video experience: Show high-quality videos to get the details right and get the best angles to give that immersive and realistic experience. 3D tours only work if they’re easy to view.
Hiring a private videographer to shoot and edit your virtual tour costs $200 on average.
But if you want to go the DIY route, buying your own equipment to film and edit costs around $400 to $600 total:
- 360-degree Camera: These usually cost $300 and above
- Tripod: A mid-range tripod can cost around $100 to $200
- Memory Card: Costs around $22 for a 256 GB memory
Filming and editing your own footage for a virtual tour gives you extra points for creativity and effort, but it’s not for everyone. How often do you have to create a 3D tour anyway? You’ll only have to do it when you make major changes to your property but even then that would only be once in several years, so hiring a videographer to do a shoot may be a better choice.
Market Your Property Right with 3D Tours and Floor Plans
Investing in 3D tours and floor plans can help create an immersive real estate experience. By offering a detailed virtual tour of your property, potential buyers or tenants can get to know your listing and decide if it’s right for them even before they look at your property in person—saving both of you time and energy.
So, is it worth the $200 investment? If you consider that hiring a videographer to help you provide 3D virtual tours can reduce vacancy days by 10%, then the $250 per year you’ll save on a rental of $1,500 per month is worth it. Plus, statistics show offering tours can get your unit filled up to 9 days faster.
And you can always reuse your video until it’s significantly outdated—which takes years.
Do you have a property in Metro Detroit that you want to market to the best possible tenants? Get in touch with us today to see how our team of property management experts can help you.
Stay tuned for the next series to know more about floor plans!