With an 11% increase in home prices this year, if you're selling a home, you've never been more in demand.
So, which digital marketing tool will help your home stand out? Whether you’re a real estate professional or a homeowner selling a home, VR home tours are a must to get your home sold.
In today’s market, you only have a few seconds to grab a buyer’s attention while they scroll through listings. Read on as we go over how 3D tours work and what buyers really want to see.
Virtual home tours are the future of real estate marketing. From cleaning to staging and everything in between, we’ve rounded up a few tricks to help you prepare for 360 video house tours. Let’s get showing.
Declutter and Purge
When a buyer tours a home virtually, the clutter in a home is just as visible as it is in person. The wonderful thing about a virtual home tour is that it shows the home as if you’re physically there. That means that buyers can see mail piled up or laundry on the floor.
Buyers can also see your stamp collection or your craft corner on the dining room table. When you’re selling a home, it’s time to declutter and purge. However, this doesn’t mean you need to toss out all your personal belongings.
Go through each room and separate items by recycling or trash, donate, and pack away. Anything you wish to keep is packed up and stored out of sight. Anything else is donated or recycled and out of the way.
You’ll be amazed by how much cleaner and larger your home looks after this exercise. While your daughter may love her collection of teddy bear posters, a potential buyer will want to see clean walls and fresh spaces.
Utilize Storage and Get a Jump on Packing
After you go through and declutter, you’ll likely be left with a lot of items you wish to store away. If you can’t part with them, get a jump on packing. You can store them in moving boxes or totes, so they are out of the way during the 3D home tour and in-person showings.
This is a huge time saver when it comes to packing up your own home as well. Anything you remove from your house is wrapped and packed, ready to go come move day. If you have room in a storage shed, closet, or garage, you can neatly stack totes or boxes there.
If you’d rather rent a storage space, you can order a storage container to come to your home. You can also take items to a self-storage warehouse to make room in the short term. When it comes time to move, you’ll already have a good amount of packing done.
In addition to collections, extra items, and décor, you can also pack up out-of-season clothing. If you’re selling in the summer, for example, free up closet space and pack your winter gear. Your closets will look neater and larger, and half the closet is ready for moving day.
Neutralize the Space
While you may love vintage cars or toy figurines, not all buyers share your joy. Selling a home means selling someone else on living there. Before having a virtual tour, you’ll want to neutralize the space as much as possible.
Remove collections, personal items, and kids' gear if you can beforehand. There’s no need to take everything down to bare walls. Narrow down your personal items to the essentials.
If you have small children, it’s OK to keep toys in the house, but some cute storage could help clean the place up quickly. Get some inexpensive toy bins or pretty baskets to store toys and games neatly away during the virtual tour as well as showings.
You want your home to feel welcoming but neutral enough that a buyer is excited to live there. They need a somewhat blank canvas to picture their own personal items in the home and their own children growing up there.
D.I.Y. Staging or Hire a Professional
If your budget or your home seller's budget allows, hire a home stager to fill in the gaps in your home. A home stager can bring in their own furniture, artwork, and décor to use or rearrange your existing pieces. The goal of home staging is to give each room a purpose.
If you’re currently using your dining room as an office and a laundry station, set it back up as a home office. Clear the clutter and set the table as you would for a dinner party. Clean up and set each room as you would for photos.
Kid's art zones, homework tables, and gift-wrapping stations should be put away for photos and the virtual tour. Buyers want to see what each room is used for. Remember to remove clutter, tidy up, and set the scene in each room as you would during an in-person showing.
Refresh Your Space with Fresh Paint
A fresh coat of paint is a great way to give your home a clean and new look. If your home is well-loved, it often has scuffs, marks, and everyday grime on some walls. Clean it up and neutralize it with paint.
If your home has a lot of colors, neutral paint could make it more appealing to the masses. Think white, cream, beige, gray, or a combination of those colors. This allows buyers to imagine their own style and color choices in the home.
Hire a professional or roll up your sleeves and try re-painting yourself. Focus on the main living spaces first. In the bedrooms and bathrooms, use light and calming colors. New paint will make your entire house feel fresh and new.
Give the Home a Deep Clean
After decluttering, staging, and painting, it’s time for a good deep clean. You can do this yourself or hire a professional. A deep clean will help your home look fresh and new.
Even in a virtual reality tour, you’ll see clean spaces, surfaces, floors, and walls. If you have any stained carpet or major spills, hire a professional to focus on these areas. Keep a supply bucket handy to give a fresh clean before in-person tours as well.
When buyers look at a home online or in person, they want to see a clean and fresh space. They don’t want to see grime, dirt, and messes. You want buyers to take the next step and come to see the home in person.
Clean and Open Windows
To help your home appear brighter and lighter, you’ll want to give some love to your windows. This means opening the window treatments and letting the natural light shine through. While our VR tours will feature professional lighting, natural light is a great enhancement.
Spend a little time washing and cleaning your windows and doors. Pet marks, fingerprints, and smudges, get wiped away to let the natural light shine through. You want your home to look as bright and airy as possible.
Check off Those Home Repairs
If you’ve been putting off small home repairs, now is the time to make them. Things like changing light bulbs or fixing the front stoop are little things you can do to help your home show better.
When a buyer is looking at a virtual tour, they want to see a home that’s move-in ready. They don’t want to see broken fixtures and a bunch of repairs. Set the tone and show buyers the pride of ownership.
The less a buyer must do, the better. If they see a bunch of repairs and broken items in the home, they will also see dollar signs. Make the buying process as simple as possible by taking care of small repairs.
Let Us Create VR Home Tours Today and Get Your Home Sold
If you’re ready to utilize VR home tours, you’ve come to the right place. From staging to cleaning, follow these tips to help your home look its best. We have all the professional marketing tours to appeal to today’s buyers.
Whether you’re a real estate agent or a home seller, let us help you utilize the latest in digital real estate marketing. To learn more about our drone aerial videos for real estate, real estate photographers, and 360 video house tours, fill out the contact form here. We’re ready to help you sell your home faster and for top dollar in today’s competitive market.