Making properties easier to see and navigate in a 3D Virtual Tours is important every day. But now with the Coronavirus and social distancing being the norm, virtual tours may be the ONLY way some potential clients get to see your properties. Pictures are great, virtual tours are wonderful and video gives you a good feel for the space. But nothing lets the client experience the space like a 3D virtual tour.

The 3D, 360-degree virtual tours have been around almost as long as the internet. You have probably seen some, and maybe you didn’t like them. Up until recently, the images were poor quality and the navigation was clunky. But technology has changed- has advanced…. and then there is that Coronavirus. No one wants to go out and risk exposure when they can self-guide their own tour from the safety of their own home.

How advanced are these tours? There are a variety of providers, many are quite inexpensive. The leader in the field of virtual tours is Matterport, and that is who we are working with. It cost a little more, but quality is worth that. So what is today’s Matterport imagery like? Matterport has stepped up their game, in both quality and usability. And they have added virtual reality tours. Now, with the proper VR head gear, one can actually “walk” through the virtual environment of the home. Its almost like being there!

Take a look at a modern 3D Virtual Tour by Matterport:

Here is a tour from Ogden…

 

 

And this is a tour we did for a three bedroom unit at Lift at The Canyons. We do a series of luxury vacation homes in Park City and Deer Valley, and as part of that package for AirBnB Luxe, each home also got full Matterport virtual tours.

 

 

Our Matterport shoot can be purchased as a stand-alone product or in conjunction with our other packages. We charge $150 per 1000 sq. ft. of property for our Matterport Virtual 3D Tours as a stand alone service, or $100 per 1000 sq. ft. in conjunction with a photo package.

Your tour is hosted free for the first three months; additional hosting after 90 days is $15/month, $60/6 months or $100/year, payable in advance. (Once hosting has lapsed, the tour is gone.)

Before you order, make sure you know how and where to post Matterport links on your MLS. We can post them in our property websites that comes free with your deluxe package marketing kit.

Alternate 3D Virtual Tours

Unlike most of our competitors, we also offer alternatives to the proprietary Matterport tours. Why would you want to use something other than Matterport? Because we shoot, edit and produce these tours, we have a lot more control over the final product. We can edit individual images in ways impossible in Matterport tours. We can present tours outside, again impossible for Matterport.

To that end, we have partnered with the manufacturer to be the first Real Estate photographer in Salt Lake to offer iGuide tors. With pricing the same as Matterport, what are the advantages of this new tour? First, it comes with an included floor plan. Not only do you get super-accurate measurements of each room, but you get an animated “avatar” version of the floor plan which follows the user through the tour. This shows exactly where ion the home the viewer is, and which direction they are looking.

Additionally, we shoot the images, and have them locally. That means we can edit them for better color, or remove objects (such as the camera reflected in a mirror). In the sample tour, just look in the bathrooms for the camera- it’s edited out!

But probably most important for property managers, multi-family complexes and other public spaces that need long-term 3D tours, the iGuide tours can be installed and hosted on your own website. No more need to pay monthly hosting to Matterport, and relying on them for service- with the iGuide tours, you can be responsible for your own hosting.

So how do these look? Here is a sample:

 

 

To be sure, these tours are not the same Matterport tours. The quality is far superior, and the control over the images make this the best option for many projects. And because these tours can be used offline, they may provide you alternatives where you thought none where available. For example, one of our most unique scans was to fully reproduce in 3D a crime scene for jurors in a court case. Because the tour could be made stand-alone on a non-Internet-enabled computer, the Jurors could study the crime scene at their leisure in the deliberation room.

The important thing here is we offer options for you. The more you tell us what you want, the more we can tailor a product to fulfill those needs. We can add info boxes, pop up images, or even link to other web pages to compliment your tour. Because there are so many options, and so much we can do with these tours, we quote these tours on a case-by-case basis.

So how do you decide? You can start by calling us and telling us what you want to see, and how you want to use the 3D tour. We can tailor a solution to your specific use. But here is a table to help you point yourself in the right direction.

 

 

Matterport

iGuide

Custom

Dollhouse (3D Fly In)

yes green check mark no red Cross x no red Cross x

Smooth 3D Walk Through

yes green check mark yes green check mark yes green check mark

Annotation / Deep Links

yes green check mark yes green check mark yes green check mark

Floor Plans

yes green check mark(* extra Charge) yes green check mark yes green check mark

Local Hosting

no red Cross x yes green check mark yes green check mark

Image Editing

no red Cross x yes green check mark yes green check mark

OBJ/CAD Output

yes green check mark yes green check mark no red Cross x

PointCloud

yes green check mark no red Cross x no red Cross x

Here are some samples of these alternative tours…. These have all been hand-made by us for specific use cases….

 

 

 

 

New Tour Type

 

Additional Options

Additional options available for your Matterport 3D Virtual Tours

Room measurements (accuracy ± 4%) $75.00
Floor Plans $85.00
Highlight Reel $35.00
Feature Labeling (per room with 5 points max per room/client furnishes descriptions) $15.00