Give customers a bird’s eye view of properties.
Looking for a cutting-edge way to market properties? Halstead Real Estate in New York has found it. The brokerage opened our eyes to what could be the future of home tours. They are currently using active drones to shoot videos of many of their listed properties. It’s a far departure from animating the MLS photos that many do today. The drone or mini helicopter literally flies around and sometimes in the property to give the viewer a detailed 360-degree view of the property. What a great way to increase the consumer experience by showing them a full panoramic 360 degree view of their future home, yard, neighborhood and more.
“Our marketing staff saw this technology being used in 2008 on an oil spill in New Orleans,” says Diane Ramirez, chief executive officer of Halstead Properties in New York. “We realized that this could be helpful for real estate. Our helicopter shots got stunning overhead views from a land perspective, but missed the close-up artistic shots. Our photographers got close-ups but missed the proximity to water and special features. We learned about the vantage points [a drone] can shoot and realized that this is the missing piece to our presentations for acreage and waterfront properties. Drones are able capture that view from 50 to 100 feet. In addition, our drones take both photos and flyover videos of the home’s exterior. We are even shooting inside homes to showcase the heights of ceilings and flow of the homes.”
Let’s take a look at it in action: Follow the link below and then click the flyover button:
http://www.halstead.com/#
Then click on the video icon for View All ProperTV Videos.
The drone above costs $20,000 to build.
The cool part is that it can fly inside the property, as well!
There are a few companies in the real estate industry offering this type of technology to brokers. The obvious use of this technology is on high-end listings. The scalability and affordability are yet to be determined for listings under $1 million.
http://www.skycamusa.com/realestate.shtml
http://skypanintl.com
The New York Times recently featured an in-depth article on the use of drones:
For those in high-end, resort markets who are looking for a competitive advantage, there are numerous stories online explaining how to do-it-yourself. The basic drones can be bought or built in the range of $1,000 upwards to $20,000.
Here’s to happy droning in the future of real estate!
This article appeared in REAL Trends Newsletter and is being reprinted with permission of REAL Trends, Copyright 2014.