Apartment Virtual Tour

By Sean Boyle

(7 minute read)

What We’ll Be Talking About Today

Welcome back ladies and gents! In this one, we’ll go over the importance of getting a virtual tour for your apartment. For a lot of our clients in real estate, we’re dealing with condos on a national basis that have multiple rooms and features. In order to properly make a transaction, we need to have a virtual tour of the condo!

Without proper property marketing, there is little chance that your listing will be found anywhere on the internet! It’s not enough anymore to just have a few photos and a basic video, you’ll need a virtual tour as well!

No matter how many units you have, this will be a great blog to read to be able to incorporate your entire company marketing, not just a single listing.

In the next three sections, we’ll discuss the three softwares that Momentum 360 uses to ensure that your condo is marketed properly. The three softwares we’ll be discussing are:

• Matterport
  • Founded in 2011, Largest VR Software in the World
• Cloudpano
  • Based in Texas, Only $50/mo for Unlimited Virtual Tours
• Kuula
  • 3D Rendered Virtual Tours

Matterport Virtual Tour

At this point, we’ve all heard of Matterport right? If not, then strap in! Since 2011, Matterport has claimed the greatest market share of any virtual tour software, and for great reasons. Their seamless scanning ability tops most software on the market now, making it easy for anyone to simply pick up their phone or camera to do a virtual tour.

Ideally, you want to use Matterport for your typical studio, 1, 2, 3 and 4 bedroom condos, since for the most part you’re just showing off the inside. On top of that, the 3D dollhouse feature allows you to get a cool visual of the entire unit, top to bottom.

You’re also able to create a “highlight reel” with the footage, showing off the best spots of the entire unit. We’d recommend going with a professional VR company like ourselves to do all of this. We’ve shot thousands of Matterport virtual tours and know the process like the back of our hand.

The only con to Matterport is that their packages can get pretty expensive as you start to grow. Unlike other software companies like Cloudpano and Kuula that just have you paying a set fee per month, the monthly rate is adjusted based on the number of active tours you have.

This might sound good…but what companies will only want to have their tour active for “part” of the year? Not many. So this is where a lot of virtual tour providers get tricked up and easily bottle necked. The ability to recognize and implement a new virtual tour software like the other two that we’ll discuss today makes it easier for people like you and I to scale. And you want to scale right?? Good. Let’s move on.

Cloudpano Virtual Tour

The ever more popular virtual tour software, Cloudpano, is a more comprehensive product that allows you to edit and change the tour to your liking. Want to virtually stage furniture into a vacant unit? Done! Need to edit out that stain on the carpet and make it seem like it was never there? Presto! Do you want to add aerial footage of the outside building to show off the neighborhood and outside environment? Totally possible!

Cloudpano in all honesty is a Matterport, just on steroids. The only thing that Cloudpano doesn’t necessarily have is the 3D dollhouse, which is a huge feature to be frank. However you can use a Canadian-based software called Metareal to create a clean, 3D dollhouse of your unit, for pennies on the dollar.

We recommend using CP to start off doing virtual tours, as you’ll get a good understanding of how the process works for actually creating 360 virtual tours, instead of having to just press one button ala Matterport. With this method, you’re actually able to learn how to edit, take precise 360 panos, pretty much do it how it always was done. So, when you go to shoot with Matterport and other advanced scanning software, you’re now able to understand everything from a fundamental perspective, so your shots will come out much better!

Kuula Virtual Tour

Now this is where the fun really starts. Kuula is an advanced virtual tour software that allows you to create 3D rendered virtual tours from blueprints. These make your unit come to life, instead of having to rely on basic 2D renderings that don’t do anyone justice.

To create something that people will remember, especially in today’s virtual world, you need something that will only continue to wow your audience. This is that wow factor.

The only issue with Kuula is that it does take a little while longer to process all of these renderings, which is ok, we want it to look good! What’s really nice about Kuula is that you have similar pricing to Cloudpano, in that you’re given a set rate for an unlimited amount of projects per month. This trumps the Matterport model, as you’re not able to have a consistent pricing factor and will only continue to pay more as you grow, which can really be annoying.

Benefits of a Apartment Virtual Tour

We’ve written many blog topics on this exact section, but we figured that we’ll give you a deep dive into apartment benefits and how getting a virtual tour for just one unit will yield solid results.

• Higher Sale Price

With great technology, comes even greater sales prices! Virtual tours have been found to increase sales prices by at least 14% year over year, with the number coming close to an astronomical 20% increase!

• Less Time on Market

With a virtual tour, you can expect to have your apartment on the market for less time, due to increased competition. Whether the listing is on Zillow, Apartments, Realtor, MLS, or all of the above

• Higher Valuation of Entire Apartment Complex

Since you now have a virtual tour of your apartment unit, this will actually increase the entire building’s value as well, since you now have at least one unit that has a tour, i.e a greater digital presence.

• Attracting Higher Quality Tenants

Since you now have greater technology to market your unit, you will have tenants that have better credit, lesser legal issues, etc that will be attracted to your unit!

• Greater Digital Presence

With all of this great marketing, Google will continue to prioritize your listing since it’s going along with their terms and conditions of recommending a virtual tour!

Process of Getting a Virtual Tour

Getting a virtual tour of your apartment unit is much easier than you think. Since 2017, Momentum 360 has been following the same 3 process system, over 50,000 times! The system makes it extremely easy for someone to get a virtual tour scheduled and delivered to them in the least amount of time. Here are the steps

1. Visit momentumvirtualtours.com and hit schedule a virtual tour button
2. Schedule your virtual tour with the correct date, time, property details, etc
3. Expect your assets to be delivered 24-48 hours after shooting!

This simple process has gotten Momentum 360 over 150+ 5 Star reviews from some of the biggest companies in the entire world!

How Much do Apartment Virtual Tours Cost

Since our inception, it’s all depended on one single factor: square footage.

We follow a pricing system of $300 (base price to send us out there) + 10% of the total square footage. So for example, if the square footage of the unit is 2500, the total price would be $550, since you take $300 + 10% of the 2500, so $250 for a total price of $550.

A lot of people complain about the prices and how they’re so expensive…but think about it. If you’re getting multiple 5 figures from your original sale price….what’s spending a couple extra dollars to make sure it’s done properly? Exactly!

We’ve written extensively about pricing and how it compares to other providers. The above pricing model we implement for every other niche than real estate, whereas real estate is more custom with packages for realtors and other brokers.

For those brokers and real estate agents who have tremendous experience with working with condos and other luxury apartment buildings, you’ll need to invest in software like this to continue your expansion with your team, group or company!

Turnaround Time for Apartment Virtual Tour

Momentum 360 normally does a couple hundred shoots per month on average, however we’ve been able to have a 24-48 hour turnaround time for the entire duration of our company history. The reason we’re able to do this is because we have built the infrastructure through our photographers and our in-house professional editing team.

Normally for all 3 software we mentioned, we can roughly average 48 hour turnaround time. Matterport is the fastest, while Kuula is the slowest, due to the more time we need to take since it’s more customized.

For Cloudpano, it’s a little in the middle since we can shoot the 360 panos on a quick 360 camera, but we’ll need to stitch together all of the panos manually and color correct, so it’ll be a little more time, but not as much as Kuula.

We try to be upfront and work within your timeframe to ensure clear and proactive expectations when doing shoots.

Next Steps with Ordering Your Virtual Tour

Like we discussed in the previous section, we have a very easy three step process that ensures that you will have one of the greatest customer experiences of all time.

To get more information about our company, check out our website here to talk to our team directly. We look forward to hearing from you and providing you with the best marketing experience for your apartment.

Momentum 360 is a Premiere Small Business and Real Estate marketing company in Philadelphia and tri-state area. Our main service offerings are 3D Virtual Tours powered by Matterport, as well as photography and videography.

We are both a Matterport Service Provider and Google Trusted Photography agency. While 3D Virtual Tours started in real estate, they are versatile and applicable across every industry. Momentum 360 specializes in virtual tours for real estate, small businesses, restaurants, retail, healthcare, professional services, and much more. These virtual tours help our clients showcase their business online, while also allowing them to rank higher on Google with SEO, and get more followers on social media. Call for a quote!