When I shot 360s extensively I would discuss the media with all our sellers and buyers. Over time I

My personal airline travel tickets experience and my impression of the feedback I get from agents and professional real estate photographers suggests that the use of 360 tours is declining airline travel tickets in general but there are hotspots of interest in 360s. It s difficult to quantify this impression. So I wanted to do this poll and hear what readers experiences with 360s are.I shot 360s for 10 years as a agent and got started using 360s in the early 2000 s done by a company airline travel tickets called bamboo.com which was eventually bought airline travel tickets by realtor.com and renamed to iPix.com. Ron Rosen , a new blog reader, who is enthusiastic about 360s reminded me that the original iPix.com went bankrupt around 2003. The current iPix.com  does 360 video- I believe this is a totally different company than the original one but I m not sure.
When I shot 360s extensively I would discuss the media with all our sellers and buyers. Over time I found that roughly a third of them really didn t like 360 images. Many clients claimed they didn t like the feeling they got from the spinning image. Although, on balance the 360s I did were a big positive airline travel tickets factor in attracting new listing customers. I think mostly because we were just doing something more than other agents at the time.
I warn beginning real estate airline travel tickets photographers to be careful because it takes much more time and equipment to create quality 360s than stills so it s important to make sure they are getting paid for their investment when when the produce a 360 product.
airline travel tickets In the end analysis, what is most important these days is that what ever media you use is instantly accessible by anyone that visits your site or tour. Historically, 360s have always had the problem that they need special viewer technology airline travel tickets based on QuickTime, Java, Flash or more recently a special App to view the 360s. Special technology is the marketing kiss of death! Your work must be instantly accessible or viewers will move on to the next listing. A good example that instant accessibility from from all platforms is possible is  tourbuzz.net tours . You can have stills, airline travel tickets 360s and soon video on tourbuzz tours that are instantly accessible by any platform. Be careful though, not all tours can do this.
Update Jan 3: Whoa, look at Fred Light s comment below. He says: I just received a call about 30 minutes ago from the CEO of one of the largest virtual tour providers in the country, airline travel tickets who does slideshows and panos. He's looking to partner together to start incorporating video into their offerings as they are seeing a drop off in interest in panos, and more interest in doing video, especially for higher end properties. Maybe the CEO reads this blog;)
Update Jan 9: This poll confirms my intuition about 360s or partial 360s. Yes, they are on the decline and currently only about 30% use them. And as comments indicate there are still people that are passionate about 360s. Thanks for everyone s participation this is very informative.
I think the use of these tours is dependent airline travel tickets on the market. airline travel tickets In my area, I rarely see these used, for whatever reason. What seems to have taken over from the 360 panos are the zooming slideshow tours (aka Visual Tour , Real Estate Shows , Imprev , etc.). These programs are very inexpensive ($25/mo or so) and many brokerage firms actually provide them to agents at a reduced cost and oftentimes free. And we know how agents love FREE. And of course, the agents can upload their own photos they took with their own cameras and that keeps it free!
As far as buyers are concerned, very few buyers I ve ever spoken to have kind words for those tours. airline travel tickets They generally despise them, as do I. People don t view space by standing in one spot and spinning around in a circle like a top! It s just not natural, and if a tour is not done well they re also distorted and somewhat nauseating airline travel tickets to watch.
From a business perspective, I think it s critical for professional photographers to be able to differentiate airline travel tickets their services from the DIY alternative and the equipment and expertise airline travel tickets required to deliver a nice pano experience continues to be a solid differentiator that drives demand for professional photography services.
On an empirical level it definitely varies very much by market. It s an established airline travel tickets part of pro packages in certain markets, and to my point above I think having it as a must-have in your market airline travel tickets drives demand for your services. We continue to see a lot of strength in the pano portion airline travel tickets of our product at TourBuzz and our great pano support is a big reason lots of people choose our platform.
Beyond that, smartphone airline travel tickets apps like Photosynth and Occipital 360 make DIY panos easy and fun, so I actually expect 360 s to become more prevalent in the future as more people are able to experiment with the format.
We use 360 s as an upsell or way to get a little extra for each job. Personally I don t like them, I think an interactive floor plan gives a far better idea of property layout (and is an even larger $$$ upsell). Looking at our tour stats when viewing 360 s numbers drop off dramatically, so much in fact that we now place them at the end of our slideshows. I figure if they stick around until the end of the tour they re going to stick around airline travel tickets for the pans. This has resulted in viewers watching the tour longer. Before I don t think they knew how to progress passed the 360 and simply stopped watching, this may have stopped them from seeing that special airline travel tickets IT thing about the property that they may have fallen in love with.
Personally I think the quality of our photos sell themselves and feel that 360 s are dated and in our market will only last another year or so. Small video clips mixed into the slide show has a far more dramatic impact but I m not sold on the solid video presentation the whole way through. I think the view has to have some control over the experience. Simply walking through the property airline travel tickets or sitting and watching a narrated video separates the potential buyer from the process. This is fine for those that DON T know how to use computers well but for those that do, I think they want to be able to navigate the experience. Maybe it s my ADD kicking in but I d rather airline travel tickets have control and see the property my way.
So for us the best solution now is the slideshow mixed with video on a floor plan where the user can jump around room to room or if they aren t tech savy just sit back and watch. But I want them to have the option.
I have been shooting 360 s since 1996 and still find a great demand airline travel tickets for them. 90% of our tours include panoramas airline travel tickets and the traffic airline travel tickets reports prove that they are still well received. Our client list reflects many, many repeat customers going back to 1996. I feel the main advantage of the 360 tours is the stickiness created by the interactive controls afforded the viewer and they can go back to any room easily and control the angle of view with their mouse.
90% of people doing Real Estate photography either do not have the equipment or skills to produce quality 360 s or are vendors/photographers pushing a different airline travel tickets technology such as video or self service slide shows. I do believe that video is a strong visual marketing tool for certain parts of a total marketing package such as Agent Introductions or Neighborhood Tours but lacks the interactivity that viewer airline travel tickets appreciate when looking at the listing online. Also video is linear , meaning you generally have to view from the beginning to the end and cannot easily review a particular room without starting airline travel tickets over. The Ken Burns effect slide shows are a poor substitute for real VT as they just display a confined angle of view in motion as opposed to allowing the viewer to look all around the room. The big push on this type of tours seems to come from vendors offering a more robust platform for Realtor s that take their own photos or still photographers to easily package their work.
I m glad you posted this. I am thinking about buying the Manfrotto pan head this year and trying to include 360s as an upsell within my virtual tour package. With the tie-ins to the iPad that allow users to move the ipad to look around the room, I think it s a pretty airline travel tickets neat product. Just not sure I m ready for the equipment airline travel tickets cost and time to learn how to do pans!
I ve never used them and have no plans to start. In our Atlanta market, the Egg was the most commonly used device for the 360 capture and as a result, the images airline travel tickets were almost always soft and poorly lit. In our market now, both in sales and rentals airline travel tickets (where is work), standard photo slide shows (zoom/pan airline travel tickets or straight on) are the gold standard.
The real problem in our market is just that there are still way too many lousy photos from agents. It would not surprise me that we don t see a ground breaking airline travel tickets ethics case in the REALTOR or MLS arenas, that an agent is found in violation by using bad marketing photos on the listing. To me, this is just as if the agent is making a written or verbal statement about how bad the listing is and don t bother looking at the house.
I initially started out shooting for Obeo and discovered that only about 5-10% of viewers took the time to watch the panoramas. Once I started shooting airline travel tickets on my own I still offered the pans on the Tour Buzz platform but have always placed the 360 s at the end of the tour. Over time , demand for the panoramas have steadily decreased so I now shoot only 1 or 2 per month. Now that our MLS system can handle 18 photos, most of my clients prefer to have good quality stills airline travel tickets rather than the panoramas. airline travel tickets Tours with panoramas can be a good marketing tool for open plan homes but terrible for older homes with traditional floor plans. I d say that most of my clients who ask for 360 s do so because their sellers asked for them, so it s a good tool for signing up new sellers, but not particularly valuable as an effective sales tool.
The biggest difficulty I have with 360 s is well 360. I do panoramic tours, but perhaps twice last year was any pano 360. Most panos are in the 90 to 200 range and I have to set that expectation when a person requests 360 s. M