The pandemic brought on many lasting changes in the average homebuyer’s habits.

With social distancing, hybrid working arrangements, and a whole slew of health & safety protocols rearing to be a part of a post-COVID world, the real estate industry was quick to adapt and overcome the many challenges COVID-19 posed.

Virtual tours, for one, had been one of the hottest topics in the real estate industry that catapulted into mainstream popularity with impressive stats to back up the hype (snappr, 2021):

• real estate listings that featured virtual got 40% more clicks
• more than 54% of buyers skipped listings without virtual tours
• 63% out of 1,900 participants made an offer on a property without even seeing it in person.

So if you’re looking to expand your real estate offerings as a seasoned pro or a newcomer just breaking into the space, getting into 3D virtual tours might be the best way to go.

Today, we’re going over how you can start offering 3D virtual tours and how to get started quick.

What is a 3D Virtual Tour?

So what exactly is a 3D virtual tour? How is it any different from a video tour?

While both formats aim to the same achieve thing – showcase a property and generate interest – there’s a key difference: interactivity.

Video tours are your traditional walkthroughs that are usually done with a realtor present. Though video tours can help put more personalization in your content in terms of the commentary, cinematography, and music choice, video is still a passive format that asks for the viewer’s passive engagement.

3D tours on the other hand get the most active engagement from every visitor. It’s quickly becoming a proxy for open houses thanks to 3D tours being readily accessible remotely.

The level of interactivity 3D tours bring to the table is exactly why experts think this format brings in more qualified leads than any other marketing content in the real estate space. Some sources even say people stay 5 to 10 times longer on real estate listings with a virtual tour (SilverSea, 2021).

That said, video tours aren’t going any time soon. Both video walkthroughs and 3D virtual tours have their time and place in the marketing strategy — 3D tours just skyrocketed in popularity being as a means to an end to the restrictions we’ve had to live with in the last few years.

Starting a 3D Virtual Tour Business

We’ve talked about how you can become a real estate photographer before and recently put together a 27-step guide to starting a photography business. If you’re thinking about doing more than 3D virtual tours, give those two a read — you’ll find most principles apply here.

But today, we’re giving you a rundown on how you can easily start a 3D virtual tour business and start making money as quickly as possible.

Pick a Niche

When people talk about 3D tours, they’re most likely talking about the format’s real estate application, and for good reason. Real estate is obviously the low hanging area of focus here available to you. But don’t dismiss other immensely profitable opportunities when they present themselves.

There are actually a lot of markets that could use a 3D tour. Restaurants being one of them. Think about it: how many restaurants do you think will benefit from 3D tour showcasing the spot’s unique vibe and aesthetics? The answer is most of them.

Your local hotels/motels could also use a 3D tour. People looking to book a place to stay a few nights in after a long drive are always curious to see what’s on offer amenities-wise.

Gyms require a certain level of commitment from would-be members. 3D tours can easily turn a prospect into a happy new member before they even go visit the gym if they liked the floor plan and all the available equipment for them to play with.

Then there are small businesses, colleges or universities, apartments, even museums — really, the use for 3D tours never stopped at just real estate listings.

So scope your area, pick a niche or two, stick to those, and get to work.

Build a Portfolio

We’ll talk about gear and how you can actually take 3D virtual tours in a minute but for now, let’s get one thing straight: you need to build a portfolio before doing anything else.

That said, your portfolio doesn’t have to be anything grand. If you got a nice place, or you know friends and family who own a nice property, then there’s no better starting point. This is good practice, too, since you’re going to be offering free work for real businesses later on during this phase and you don’t want to look as clueless as an absolute beginner.

When you get enough practice and you’re comfortable with the entire process of creating 3D virtual tours with an acceptable turnaround time, you’re going to want to talk to people who could use your services. Remember, you’re still learning the ropes, so you still won’t have cash rolling in just yet.

Getting 3D Virtual Tour Clients

Now that you’ve shot a couple or more 3D tours off of your friends’ properties, we’re moving on to the second stage of your “practice round.” Go after real businesses and start offering free work.

There are a couple of pretty straightforward ways you can go about this. The first one is doing cold calls and emails.

What you do is you fire up a spreadsheet, look around your locale and the internet, find businesses that are in your niche or those who you think will benefit from your 3D tours, and then you list down everybody’s contact information. From here, you need to prepare a script for your cold call/emails. You’ll find a few good examples here you can tweak to fit your niche.

You might have to contact 20 or more real estate agents or businesses to secure a few test projects to work on and that’s okay!

The next thing you can do after cold calls and emails is to actively pitch in Facebook groups in your area. It doesn’t matter what niche they’re in, chances are your target market is living in an FB group somewhere. You only need to engage, share some of your work, pitch, and you’ll be off to the races in no time.

Real estate agents are easy pickings because chances are, they have a property in mind that’ll benefit from a free 3D tour. You can also scope out your local listings on Zillow or Realtor and get your leads off these websites.

But don’t forget you can also target local businesses:

• Restaurants
• Hotels/Motels
• Gyms
• Universities
• Apartments
• Museums

Now here’s something that’ll set your 3D virtual tour business’ early years on the right course. Once you close a few portfolio-piece projects, stipulate that you’ll be getting video testimonials in exchange for your free work. Seriously, nothing is as powerful as a marketing tool as happy real estate agents giving your work a glowing review.

Once you get comfortable with the process, then you can start charging as soon as you’re ready.

Creating 3D Virtual Tours

You don’t hear this very often in the photography space, but how fast you can hit the ground running with your 3D virtual tour business has a lot to do with your gear.

Of course, you can still use your real camera system for shooting virtual tours. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say there are far more efficient systems that will get the job done with a few literal clicks of a button.

Fortunately, you can get started with very little 3D gear.

3D Virtual Tour Equipment Must Haves:

Cameras

• iPhone – You probably know this already but your iPhone is more than capable of shooting quality photos. Doing 360 work with your phone is a viable option if you’re still on the fence about diving fully into the space, you might just have to work a little harder and get a specialized tripod and pay a software subscription to make it work.
• Insta360 ONE X2 – The Insta 360 ONE X2 is easily the fastest and most affordable entry point you can get for 360 work. It has HDR, easy to use, comes with a competent app, shoots RAW, and can be had for less than $400 (see current price). If you’re just starting out and don’t want to spend an arm and a leg on a specialized camera for 360 work, get the Insta360 ONE X2.
• Matterport Pro2 – Is the camera you’ll find in most pros’ hands doing multimillion-dollar properties. The Pro 2 produces some of the most accurate models you can get in the higher end of the market. I’d say check out what Matterport’s offering a few years into your career as the Pro2 will cost you upwards of $3,000.

360 Monopod/Tripod

You’ll want to get a specialized monopod/tripod that won’t have its leg/s sticking out in the shot. Here are a couple of good options professional 3D virtual tours creators use:

• Bushman Monopod V2
• Best360 Monopod

Software

• Lightroom or Photoshop – You’ll want to get a subscription for either if you’re planning on shooting RAW. There’s a good chance your 360 camera will have a free plug in for you to use on both software when editing 360 files.
• Your 360 Camera’s Native App – No matter which 360 camera you get, there should be a native app available to you to stitch and export 3D tours. Great for when you’re just starting and learning the ropes.
• Matterport – Now this one’s more of your industry-standard software. Matterport lets you add notes and tags to sections of your tours, do a photorealistic, 3D dollhouse floorplan, give viewers access to a measurement mode, and a lot of fancy 3D virtual tour features an interested buyer will want to play with.

Shooting a 3D Virtual Tour for Beginners

Obviously, we can’t cover everything you need to learn about the craft here, but we’ll be going over some general guidelines that’ll put you on the right track.

• Shoot at Eye Level – The idea is when you shoot at eye level, you’re effectively mimicking the average person’s point of view, giving them a more realistic representation of the property.
• Try out HDR Mode – When you’re shooting indoors, you’ll be dealing with mixed lighting. At default, your camera will not have the dynamic range to preserve the highlights coming in from the windows as you expose for the interior. HDR is a quick workaround here as it’ll shoot multiple images at different exposures, merge them and hopefully give you better exposed images without blown highlights.
• Shoot in the Early Morning or Late Afternoon – HDR mode can only get you so far. You’ll want to schedule your shoots when the sun doesn’t shine as bright outside for best results.
• Play with RAW – Tweaking every image you shoot may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but it’s still worth checking out if your camera supports it. RAW will retain more detail than JPEGs and will give you more leeway when touching up your files.
• Get Out of the Shot! – This might sound obvious but staying inside the room while the camera scans the area is an embarrassing mistake most beginners do. Your phone will act as your 360 camera’s remote so get out of the shot before you start scanning!

How Much Should I Charge for 3D Virtual Tours?

There are always a few considerations you should factor in when you’re trying to figure out that magic number.

Firs of which would be how much exactly your local market is charging. It doesn’t matter if you think you’re the Avedon of 3D tours — if you’re charging close to double what your peers are doing on your first few months in the game, you’re going to have a hard time closing people.

So get out there, scope your market, get an average, and go from there.

You should also be looking at your business costs, specifically software. Matterport for one can run you from $10 to $129 monthly so definitely remember to put your subscription fees into the equation.

From here, there’s two ways you can go about your pricing structure:

Alex Serrao follows a straightforward pricing structure that is heavily dependent on the property size. It’s a flat fee for every square footage bracket and you might want to mimic the same system to keep things simple as you’re starting out.

You can also do a flat fee + 10% of the property’s square footage. Let’s say you want to charge a flat fee of $100, a 3D virtual tour for a 2500 sq ft property would total to about $350.

Of course, these figures will require a lot of tweaking depending on your area, as real estate markets wildly differ from one state to the other. But as a good rule of thumb, you can always start low and start ramping up pricing as you close more clients and polish your skills as you go.

If you’re doing real estate videography or photography, you can also play with packaged services and give your clients’ properties the full service for a discount.

Wrapping Up

It’s now just a matter of learning your gear, the process, the pitching, and your niche. I realize this will be especially hard for creatives who never completed a job with their real camera system sitting snugly in the bag, but doing 3D tours is too good of a low hanging fruit to pass on.

While you may not be hitting that magical six-figure income in your first year as many of the most prolific 3D tour studios, you couldn’t have picked a better time to get into the space.

We’re experiencing the perfect storm for 3D virtual tours to rise as one of the hottest opportunities in the real estate industry today.