Once COVID Goes Away Virtual Tours MUST Stay! Renting your rental

This past March I invested in my first 360 camera and have started implementing virtual tours for all my rentals. Because of COVID and social distancing guidelines in my state I was almost forced into virtual tours, I had to do something to get my units rented with limited interaction. This ended up being a blessing in disguise. I have seen plenty of virtual tours in the past with homes for sale and occasionally for rentals but it never crossed my mind that I needed them for my units. I figured Zillow is easy enough and we typically find high quality tenants in a few weeks, leaving very little vacancy. After doing my first virtual tour I became hooked, here are my reason why…

Accuracy

How accurate and true to the eye a virtual tour is what is so impressive to me. I submit my virtual photos to a 3rd party to generate. When I received the tour back for the first time and clicked through it myself, I was in shock of how accurate and life like the unit is. When I get guest that see my units for the first time and are not familiar with virtual tours there first response tends to be disbelief of how accurate the tour depicts the unit for rent.

Time

The amount of time saved by sending a virtual tour I was never expecting. What I like most about virtual tours are the amount of people that said “this unit is not for me.” These people would have been hours wasted driving to locations, waiting around, showing unit, etc. all to hear “No.”. And the people that want to schedule showings tend to be serious. The amount of in person showings I had this past year went down substantially, I was able to get units rented with far less showings and recently as much interest as normal non pandemic year (March-May was low with inquiries which I believe was due to COVID).

Dimensions

The Cool award goes to room dimensions. When my 360 camera takes a photo it also calculates the size of the rooms. Once again huge time saver, I had people love one of my units in particular that has a small 3rd bedroom. I always remind people to check out the room sizes to see if it meets their needs, I has a few “not for me.” I would have otherwise shown the unit had they not seen the dimensions.

Virtual tours are here to stay for me. It has played a huge roll in helping me find tenants at a fast-efficient rate. If you are in charge of getting properties rented, I suggest you take a tour and find out for yourself why it will benefit your business.