Lock-In: I’m All Eyes

A lot has changed in the last 18 months, and it seems a lot is sticking around for the foreseeable future.

When the pandemic first forced itself into our lives, we all had to adapt to the change in circumstances, or risk falling by the wayside.

The biggest issue for most of us, is that to do well in property, giving a sense of that personal touch is usually a great way to get ahead. But what was a huge advantage for most, soon became a massive headache when social distancing measured were enforced.

So, how do you get hundreds of potential tenants into your properties when no-one can leave the house? We had Ed Sloan, Business Director of iTours Pro to showcase his revolutionary approach to virtual tours.

Back to the Beginning

We kicked off with how Ed first dipped his toe into the landlord game.

I’m sure we’ve all heard the horror stories of the business of renting properties. Some tenants will quite happily neglect your property, some will withhold rent, and others will cause issues with the authorities. It’s all part of the business.

But Ed thought he might just have been the unluckiest landlord yet, as he found himself on his hands and knees repairing a radiator that had been kicked off a wall on the first day of a very long and tiring tenancy.

His first forays into property investing finished, Ed decided against sticking to the landlord path, and instead decided to build a business designed to help landlords attract quality tenants rather than bad ones, and iTours Pro was born!

Video Or Virtual

Probably the biggest misconception with virtual tours is the confusion between video and virtual.

So, what’d the difference?

A video tour is exactly what it says on the tin: a three to five-minute tour of the property, going from room to room and showing off all the best bits about what it’s like to live there.

To show your property in the best light, they’re really good. In fact, they just might be too good. Viewers know implicitly that the video will have been put together to sell them the dream, not the reality.

Virtual tours differ from video tours here in their ability to give the agency of movement to the viewer, not the director. Think of them like a video game where you control whatever it is you want to do next.

For property, that means heading in any direction, taking any route through the house, or maybe staring out the window or at that crack in the skirting board for however long you please to. With virtual tours, as with life, there’s no hiding the reality of your property from potential tenants.

Why iTours Pro

Semantics aside, what is it about iTours Pro that sets them apart from every other provider in the Virtual Tour market?

This is where it gets interesting.

As good as virtual tours are, they come at a cost. On average you’ll spend around £500 creating a tour of your property, and many landlords have decided the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

That was until Ed realised there was a better way to make the facility practical for the rental market, and set about changing the recipe.

What iTours Pro provide is a do-it-yourself approach where customers can shoot, stitch, and host their tours in around 30 minutes flat. Sounds perfect right?

As well as plummeting the cost of creating the tour in the first place, this DIY approach also cuts down time expenditure dramatically. Our only advice would be to give yourself an hours for your first one, as it takes a little familiarisation before you can truly reach top speed.

The Hardware

If you were to ask us to price up the specification for a 360-degree camera, case, and tripod to do the job for you, we wouldn’t know if we were looking at £300 or £30,000.

And since this is the biggest hurdle to getting started on your tours, wouldn’t it be a good idea if everything was already priced up, packaged, and done for you? Ed certainly thought so, and he took us through the hardware package he’s put together for his customers.

Each item has been specified separately, but packaged to work together to create a virtual tour. This means you’re not stuck with a shoddy tripod just because it’s the one that comes with the camera, or vice versa – or, even worse, finding out that your hardware isn’t compatible with anything because it was all bought separately.

Ed’s done all the hard work for you, even down to cutting the foam in the carry case to make sure it all sits snug and rattle-free.

The best thing? iTours don’t even make any money on it – it’s all done at cost to get you going with your first few tours, now that’s great service.

The Little Details

While a virtual tour is a great feature in the marketing of any property, the final touches available in the platform do a lot to make sure yours is head and shoulders above the competition.

One of the best abilities is to highlight and add notes within the tour. It gives a chance to relay more critical information to potential tenants such as catchment areas, broadband speed, energy ratings, all vital information which could swing someone’s view on a property before moving on to the next.

Probably the most underrated part of virtual tours is the attention-grabbing aspect, with ease of scrolling through content on our mobiles, grabbing a person’s attention is key to securing a tenant and once you have the attention you can give them an engaging tour to keep their attention and interest up.

We think iTours Pro is the perfect solution of the rental property market, it gives you the ability to showcase to 1000’s of potential tenants without anyone walking through the door.

With pricing cheaper than a monthly Spotify subscription, it just makes sense to open up your property and with a 30-day free trial, you have nothing to lose.

Find more about them here.