Making a video tour of your rental home is a great way to highlight its best features and attract new tenants. The team at Draper Realty has put together some guidelines to help you produce an interactive and professional video tour.
Benefits of Producing a Video Tour
Making a rental video tour for your prospective tenants has a few benefits. Compared to simply looking at photos, creating a virtual tour engages interested renters and enables them to interact with the property. Potential tenants can go around the property and visualize living there.
Including a video tour in your listing can help prospective renters who are unable to visit the property in person make a decision. They can play the video and see the rental at their own convenience.
Customize the Rental Video Tour
When filming the video tour, try to replicate an in-person home or apartment showing. As soon as the tour loads, you want to catch your potential tenants’ attention. You want them to visualize themselves in each room and area of your rental. If you're unsure of how to do this, it’s a good idea to look at examples for inspiration.
Prospective tenants are more inclined to submit an application if they can picture themselves living in your rental home. Therefore, it would be an advantage to include the application requirements at the end of the video or add a link on how they can apply.
Virtual Tours Don’t Need to Be Costly
You can certainly edit a rental video tour without paying a videographer or editor, however, patience is required as it could take some time to piece your clips together. You'll be ready to go once you have a better understanding of how to take 360-degree photos and know how to use your camera to publish stunning shots.
Choose the Appropriate Hardware and Software
To produce professional-looking images, you should take high-quality photos in each space. Thankfully, this does not mean you are required to purchase a high-end camera, you can shoot excellent pictures using your phone.
There are various approaches you can use to collect photos for your virtual tour. Here are a few practical and interesting choices for snapping pictures and producing your own video tour:
Consider Using a DSLR Camera and Accessories
Although having a high-end camera is not necessary, it will provide excellent pictures and videos. A DSLR camera can be the best choice for you if you're willing to dedicate a little extra time to producing your tour.
You'll also need other camera accessories if you use a DSLR camera. An example would be additional lenses, which would be useful for capturing wide-angle shots and panoramic photos.
You would want to consider purchasing a tripod to keep the camera steady when shooting. Furthermore, with a DSLR, a camera screen is available just like with any other camera. This way, you can review the photographs and correct any angles or adjust the brightness.
Smartphone and Free Apps
Using your phone to take panoramic images is your best option if you're searching for something more straightforward than a camera. You can submit the best photographs with the help of a variety of free applications and products. With the help of these apps, you can shoot a 360-degree view of your rental properties.
Showcase the Ideal Representation of Your Rental Property
Once you have decided on the software and equipment to use in creating the virtual tour, here are some suggestions for capturing beautiful images:
Shoot in Landscape Mode
It can be an unpleasant experience for interested applicants to watch a video with two black vertical bars on either side of your video. That’s why it’s highly recommended that you film your virtual tour horizontally or in landscape mode to avoid making this rookie mistake.
Aside from being aesthetically beautiful, shooting horizontally will allow you to get more in your shot. Prospective tenants will enjoy watching your property video more if they do it in widescreen or on their phones. Make sure to carefully frame your shots and limit zooming in to avoid low-quality output.
Film in Adequate Lighting
When taking clear and appealing footage, a sufficient amount of light is necessary. Open the windows and drapes to allow natural light in, and turn on the lights inside the room to brighten any dark spaces. Be careful when filming against windows as too much light could result in overexposure.
Control Your Audio
Include narration in your tour if you wish to highlight specific characteristics of your house. For instance, if you want potential tenants to know that one of the rooms in your rental property was recently refurbished, it would be a fantastic idea to mention this in the voiceover when you record footage of that room.
Mute your audio while filming if you want to prevent background noise from being captured in your video. You can add some music once you've finished editing your video to keep your audience interested. The music builds the tone while they watch, and the voice-over provides added insights.
Bottom Line
Part of successfully marketing your rental home is making a virtual tour available, especially to those interested tenants who can’t make it to the showing. When adding a video tour, give precise details and present the rental home in the best possible way. A quality video tour can generate a lot more interest in and draw renters to your rental property.
If you don’t have experience creating or editing these kinds of videos, let Draper Realty help! We are a professional full-service property management company that can help you market your rental property and commit to maintaining a high occupancy rate. Let’s discuss how we will manage your property and maximize your ROI. Contact us today!