How Virtual Tours Can Help Your Home Sell Faster

To sell your home fast, you need to grab buyers' attention. Sure, a well-written listing, great photography, open houses and private showings help. But Zillow data shows that one listing feature made homes sell, on average 14% faster than listings without this feature*: a 3D Home tour. While other houses in your neighborhood may linger on the market, here's why virtual tours and interactive floor plans can help you put up a sold sign.

What are 3D Home tours?

Zillow 3D Home® tours is a free tool for sellers that allows buyers to experience a dynamic virtual tour of a listed home. 

In traditional virtual tours, a photographer or real estate agent records a room-by-room video as they walk through the house. It's a very two-dimensional experience, limited by what the camera can see.

With a 3D Home tour, house hunters see every room as if they were standing in it. A 3D Home tour creates an immersive, clear view of the home that buyers can navigate at their own pace as if they were there in person. And having one in your listing can attract more viewings — according to Zillow data, listings with a 3D Home tour received on average 37% more views than those without one.

What are interactive floor plans?

Interactive floor plans** are an optional feature available on the Zillow 3D Home app that require a Ricoh Theta 360-degree camera. (3D Home tours can also be captured using a professional camera, or photographers can use a smartphone. Learn how to get started.) 

Bringing your listing to life with an interactive floor plan adds another layer of reality and detail for the buyer browsing your listing online. 

When a buyer enters the 3D Home tour with this feature, the interactive floor plan* pops up with a map and a 'you are here' button to orient them in the house. It also shows the layout of the whole home from that location, which illustrates the room-to-room flow.

Interactive floor plans allow buyers to not only quickly see what it feels like to move around the home, but be able to better get a sense of room size and orientation in real time, versus trying to decipher a 2D floor plan alone. This can take the guesswork out of the homebuying process and let buyers save time in deciding whether a home is a fit for their needs. 

Like 3D Home tours, these schematics also set your listing apart from other homes that buyers may be considering.

The advantages of virtual tours for sellers

3D Home tours attract serious buyers

This improved view helps buyers narrow down their options before they set up in-person tours. In a competitive market, this benefits both buyers and sellers by saving everyone time. It also weeds out the looky-loos, letting you know you're dealing with only truly interested buyers.

Your listing will get more exposure

You don’t want your home to get lost in a sea of listings, and having a Zillow 3D Home tour and interactive floor plan not only makes your listing stand out, it can help it get improved visibility. Your listing will get specialized exposure in Zillow search results, special filters and appear in dedicated emails to buyers. All of this can help showcase your home to serious buyers sooner, which may help your home sell faster.

Virtual tours are ideal for the ‘new normal’

During the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, the world stumbled into some new habits that aren't going anywhere — and for good reason. Virtual tours offer a safe, accessible touring option for buyers with any number of reasons to stay home: a disability, illness, hectic schedule, or any other barrier to an in-person tour.

Another change that's likely here to stay is that many people continue to work remotely. That means they can live wherever they choose. When dreaming about homes in their ideal, potentially far-flung, locations, buyers may want to start their house hunting from home. Interactive floor plans and 3D Home tours let them see your listing as if they were touring in person, no matter where in the world they're located.

Buyers are demanding online options

A whopping 95 percent of home buyers use the internet when buying a home. And 40 percent of Millennials say they'd be comfortable buying a home after viewing it virtually only. As the home buying market continues to get younger and more digital, buyers' expectations for cutting-edge digital tools to simplify their house hunt will just keep rising. In fact, according to the Zillow Group Consumer Housing Trends Report 2021, the majority of all buyers agreed somewhat or completely that they wish more listings had 3D tours (61%) and that it would be easier to look at properties on their phone and tour them on their own time (63%).

The good news is, you don’t need a crash course in 3D photography to take advantage of this opportunity to snag buyers’ attention. Talk to your agent about adding a 3D Home tour and interactive floor plan to your listing, and share this flyer to show them how 3D Home tours and interactive floor plans can help get your listing more exposure with Zillow's audience.

For more tips on how to make your listing stand out, visit How to Market Your Home for Sale.

*Based on data collected January 2021 - July 2021

**Interactive floor plans are currently available in Denver, with plans to launch in other markets soon. Check back for updates as we expand to see if we’re in your market.