"I have made seven sales directly from the use of VisualTour. I serve a Boutique Market - Lakefront Resort Properties, but many of my ideas can be applied to any market. As a long time Realtor, I have evolved my business into an Internet based Real Estate company, and as a member of the Allen Hainge CyberStars, I have found some unusual ways to tie in VisualTours with my entire marketing operation.

"I have a link on my web site where I can send a Buyer Agency Client to view a specially done VisualTour for a home listed by another agent. I find most agents here don't use virtual tours (they should), and even if they do, the quality is poor as they rely on third party vendors. I sold a home last month for $872,000 to a client that came to visit a friend on the lake. The client had never been here before, and came from Kansas City. He had to return home, but was very interested in purchasing now. I sent him information on six homes in his price range ($750,000.00-$1,200,000.00), and we narrowed it down to three available properties. I then made extensive VisualTours of each property, giving him the unique tour numbers so only he and his wife could access the tours from the password protected area of my web site for my Buyer Clients.

"This house already had an ordinary virtual tour from a third party vendor on the listing, and I sent that tour to the client by e-mail and then had them access the "Buyer" VisualTour from my web site. The wife called and thanked me for doing the special VisualTour, it made the sale! They purchased the home, subject to their coming on-site to do a inspection (before they had ever seen the home personally, just using the VisualTour), they came and the house was even better than photos show!

"I have done this 6 times in the last 3 years, and expect to do more of this as time goes on. I think agents that work the resort market or "Transferees" could use VisualTour for this type of marketing very effectively. I only use this when I have a Buyer Agency Contract and this added level of service helps me get contracts for Buyer Agency. I believe VisualTour is by far the best virtual tour product on the market, because you can customize it and do a much better job than with any third party vendors."

Harry J. Nicholie
Lakefront Realty
www.lakefrontrealty.net
e-mail Harry@lakefrontrealty.net