In the past, I’ve never been a real fan of virtual tours for most properties. My thought process was that plenty of well lit photos from the homeowner will do the job and give the viewer what they are looking for. 2 things are changing my stance on this. The first is that the overall quality of virtual tour production is going up. I must admit, these tours are starting to consistently look really really good. 2nd, sellers occassionally take and submit awful photos. 

I’ve gotten to the point where if a seller doesn’t own a quality digital camera or they have difficulty emailing photos, I almost always recommend a virtual tour. The advantage here is not just the virtual tour itself, but also the photographer will take your still shots for you and email them to us for uploading to the MLS.  The difference in a listing with quality well lit photos and dim grainy photos is night and day. Many times you can talk the photographer into taking addtl photos for you or even tip them a few bucks and ask them to take a plethora of extra shots.

These models can be useful for following trends in your area, however, they very rarely provide accurate valuations for specific properties. Anyone who has done a search on zillow has noticed this. A quick Zillow search will yield properties with “Zestimates” hundreds of thousands of dollars above and below actual market value. NAR is developing a tool for home valuation based upon MLS data from all over the country. The problem is that not everyone has to participate. Any agent or homeowner can choose to opt out of this, thus substantially affecting the end result data. It only takes a few agents within a subdivision to opt out to throw off the data greatly.

In the end, rely upon your own research through the county records, as well as credible appraisers.

It’s really you up to you, however, finding a tenant through the rental section of the MLS is easily attainable by posting your MLS listing in the rental section of the MLS. Many agents work with potential tenants and search the MLS daily for rentals… sim to what they do for a prospective buyer.  Our flat fee program works in the same fashion for both rental listings and for sale listings. The MLS is a much more valueable tool for locating a tenant than newspapers, craigslist, etc… because your property is reaching a much wider audience.  In addition, most MLS’s feed their rental listings over to Realtor.com, just as they do with the for sale listings.

If this is you, call us or email us and ask us to review your listing and look for reasons why your listing may not be generating the number of showings you are hoping for. Typically, we can look at your listing, look at your competing listings, and then give you a very accurate reason for your traffic count. There are plenty of buyers out there, as a seller, you need to understand your property is competing with the other properties in your area for buyers. Increased traffic doesn’t come by accident, it comes from pricing your property correctly and making your property available to show.  If you are wanting to increase your traffic, feel free to call us anytime for a listing review.