How to Use Video to Sell Your House
With Google acquiring YouTube for $1.65 billion yesterday, video on the Internet has arrived in a big, big way.
For many years, I’ve thought that video is a very effective way to sell something over the Internet. During the dotcom boom, I worked for a media company where we pioneered the use of streaming video profiles for use in e-commerce settings. In 2001 however, we were hamstrung by low broadband adoption rates and far too many inefficient media formats that required cumbersome plugins. (So, what do you encode in; Quicktime, Windows Media, RealPlayer etc. etc.?).
Fast forward a few years. It seems that the online video industry may have settled on a universal, ubiquitous format - Macromedia Adobe Flash. It’s simple, transparent and most modern browsers already ship with the plugin installed. Plus, it starts nearly instantaneously, so no painful “Buffering 10%” messages anymore, thank God.
Together, higher broadband penetration and Flash are going to propel web marketing increasingly into things like video and interactive multimedia, much like we imagined could happen five years ago.
What this means for real estate is there are going to be more and more ways to use these tools to market a home on the Internet. Especially high-end, multi-million dollar listings, where they typical have longer sales cycles and much more discerning buyers. Take this article from today’s Sarasota, FL Herald Tribune for example: “Builder lets his luxury homes do the talking“.
Builder Bruce Saba and Broker Michael Saunders, are now using video to sell their homes. Why? Because only video is able to capture the unique qualities of the home.
The films focus on unique homes, like Bella Vita, and interesting places to “convey the emotional story behind the fabulous spaces, intriguing people, and inviting locations associated with them.”
Their site, which is available at www.floridagulfstories.com, is very Flash-heavy, which I wouldn’t normally recommend for a web site due to SEO incompatibility. For the target market they’re chasing for this type of listing however, I believe it is suitable. (Though I did get a number of odd script errors in Firefox). The videos themselves are produced by Inman Stories, the folks behind the neighborhood review site TurnHere.com, and are very slickly produced. Check out Bainbridge Island Property, for another example of Inman’s excellent videos.
Video adds an intimacy to a listing that a static page is unavaible to convey. Only through video can you convey qualities that text and pictures fail to illustrate. And, by focusing on the people behind the stories, like Inman does, it somehow humanizes the whole process a little bit, even though you know you’re watching a sales pitch.
Now of course, the investment required in hiring a professional video production company like Inman means that for all but the most high-end listings, it’s probbably cost prohibitive to incorporate video into your marketing efforts. But as I wrote several months ago, there are ways you can use YouTube to host a kickass presentation that you yourself can create on the cheap.
But the bottom line here is that many of the technological barriers have been removed and so with a little creativity, a truly effective multimedia marketing presentation on the Internet is now attainable.
More reading: Using OneTrueMedia to create a multimedia presentation
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9 Comment(s)
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Jack Wimberly | Oct 10, 2006 | Reply
Allow me to gloat, but my company produced a video for a well-known Los Gatos estate, another example of a higher-end video. http://www.LegendaryEstate.com/film.html. We have found that in Silicon Valley, at least, a short feature film versus a property walkthrough is also a viable tool to impress your seller, a potential seller, a buyer, and other real estate professionals.
Cheers to cutting-edge property tours!
Joel Burslem | Oct 11, 2006 | Reply
Very nice video Jack.
Woz’s old home - what a neat property to be selling. No surprise to see an iMac on the kitchen counter then!
Mike Southwood | Oct 12, 2006 | Reply
I own a real estate digital video tour company in Pittsburgh. I have found that marketing to realtors has been tough going - don’t want to spend the $. Would it be more beneficial to target the home sellers?
This is the next generation of digital marketing and I’m hopeful it will catch on here!
anony-mouse | Oct 18, 2006 | Reply
Outside of high end homes with professionally produced video, I’ve not seen any good video of a “regular guy” property. (3/2 - ~$130k) Creating quality, professional, well-lit, non-shakey, video with a good script is very hard work and time consuming. Amateurs always pan too fast. Bad video or images can actually damage the listing price or make a listing take longer to reach the close. I don’t see most real estate agents having the talent to do video or willing to part the the bucks.
Jack Wimberly | Oct 18, 2006 | Reply
I agree with Mr. -Mouse, but fortunately for my company the average home price being over $900k in this town alone helps raise the bar for client expectation of their Realtors.
Have you had any experience with property videos, -Mouse?
Fred | Nov 1, 2006 | Reply
I started doing narrated video tours last spring [NashuaVideoTours.com] . It took many months of experimenting, learning, etc. to get it right (best combination of high quality, decent download time, compatibility, etc). They are all shot in high definition with music and voiceover narration.
I just recently started marketing to realtors - and I must say it’s going pretty well. Most of the business comes from agents who see the tours on Realtor.com and through the local MLS.
I absolutely think that video tours will be all over the web in the next couple of years. It’s light years ahead of these 360 degree tours that everyone is using to distort homes nationwide. The problem is the cost involved in doing a good job - it’s not something that can compete with the $99 360 degree tours. But the way I look at it - it’s not SUPPOSED to compete with those tours. EVERYBODY does those tours - for agents that want to set themselves apart - a video tour is definitely a way to do that for only a little more money.
The additional benefit is that these can be used for Video Podcasts of the listings (I do that too!) as well as for viral marketing on all of the video sites out there, which all get indexed by search engines which all send traffic back to the website, etc….
Phil | Dec 3, 2007 | Reply
Unless you are talking about a very large property, real estate companies do not have the margin to pay out the necessary funds to professionally cut a piece on a property. User supplied content will always be around — especially as people (realtors) become more educated about video production. Youtube and companies like Youtube will provide you a location to host your video. From that point, you can simply insert the video into your site.
David Pylyp | Dec 3, 2008 | Reply
Its not only the benefits of the home that can be displayed. Topical pieces that are short can be added and embedded into the webpages to attract or promote your services.
http://www.eleganthomesinwesttoronto.com/ShowResources.cfm?TypeOfPage=3&Page=&Pageid=48664
or provide a Satisfaction Guarantee
I think that in real estate this technology allows people to interact and actually interview the agent prior to their arrival at the home.
David Pylyp
EleganthomesinwestToronto.com
Julian | Mar 18, 2009 | Reply
Video is an exeptional tool for showing property, new software make things easier all the time. Definately increases the desirability of the property. Combining everything togeather in one package there’s the trick.
http://www.cashdetect.com/recommends/estate_agents_use_evp
Easy video Producer is a complete video communications package thats free.