ShareAs the network of virtual-tour providers specializing in turnkey 3-D services grows, the products and platforms for building and hosting interactive tours on your own have become more intuitive to use. You’ll find a solution that works best for you — but the cost may give you sticker shock.
If you don’t want to hire a professional to create an interactive 3-D tour, there are some products available as do-it-yourself options from vendors such as EasyPano, RealTourVision, and Matterport.
To create fully navigable 3-D tours, their bundles include a special camera or lens for a digital SLR and a camera mounting system. Combined with their companion software or tour-building service, these products give you control to capture and create your own tours. Once photos are uploaded to the software or service, they are automatically combined to create the 3-D interactive tour. Matterport users also get an interactive floor plan and 3-D “dollhouse” rendering of the home.
Most 3-D products for real estate include interactive floor plans, which give your clients more to work with. The drag-and-drop ease with which they can redesign the space captures their imagination about a home’s possibilities. The combination of a floor plan and 3-D imaging invites viewers to fully explore a home, panning and zooming around its rooms for a more realistic virtual-tour experience.
For now, that is the best thing next to being there in person. There may come a day when virtual reality will further enhance buyers’ experience to the point where they can confidently purchase without visiting a property. But today’s 3-D tours are there to help buyers narrow their choices and pick up the phone to call you. Here are some 3-D solutions and enhancements you can use to make prospects do just that.
| Product Name | Price | How It Works | Demo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Floored | Starts in the $1,000 range for a 3-D rendering, based on square footage and detail | Floored creates an interactive, navigable 3-D model of a space or building as an aid for visualizing its residential or commercial potential. Each model includes a 2-D floor plan with clickable points of interest viewers can use to orient themselves within the rendering. The company hosts these tours and provides links for viewing on desktop and mobile devices. | View a demo. |
| Matterport | Matterport camera: $4,500; image processing: $19; required tour hosting starts at $49 per month for up to 49 tours; available as tour-creation services through its authorized affiliates or as bundled hardware and services | The Matterport Pro 3-D camera captures 360-degree images of each room of a home and measures interior dimensions. Once the images are uploaded to the company’s website, the companion service processes these images into a seamless “DollHouse” 3-D rendering of the home’s layout. By clicking on the screen, viewers can move through the entire house and zoom in on features in a virtual simulation of a walkthrough. | View a demo. |
| iGuide | Price for tour-creation service varies by provider; average cost ranges from $200 to $300. Check website for local availability | The iGuide tour is an interactive floor plan with landmarks for specific locations throughout a home. When a user clicks on those landmarks, an immersive image of the view from that point is displayed. As the viewer looks around the room, the icon moves to orient them within the floor plan. Includes tour analytics and tools for measuring rooms. | View a demo. |
| Floorplanner.com Pro | $29 per month for up to 15 projects | This cloud-based solution for creating multilevel interactive floor plans will render a 3-D version of the floor plan for use in marketing materials. Subscribers can embed the plan on a website or listing page and allow visitors to rearrange objects, take measurements, and modify the floor plan. | View a demo. |
| Virtual Tour Outfit | $2,499 | This bundle for Windows PCs provides the hardware and software to capture 360-degree immersive images with a digital SLR. Includes a special fish-eye lens and rotator mount. When attached to a tripod, the rotator moves the camera to capture the entire room. Includes PanoWeaver Pro and Tour Weaver Pro software to process these images and create an interactive, immersive 3-D tour. | View a demo. |
| Fusion HD Interactive Virtual Media | Starting at $99 for software | This company offers interactive tour software as well as hardware and software bundles for creating your own tours, along with referrals to authorized providers of tour services. Software combines panoramic images and HD video into a tour. Users can click for location on a map, pan and zoom to view panoramic images, or navigate through the tour by clicking on photos of rooms. | View a demo. |
